Pulling The Strings
by Hubris Plus
Summary: Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths. At least it's better than Bloody Mist. SI
1. The Desert For The Sand

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a small tropical island, which I am stranded on. Please send help, I'm out of coconuts and the seagulls are _learning._

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**Chapter 1: The Desert For The Sand**

At first, I thought I was in a coma. Get hit by a car, go into a coma. It seemed logical, considering I could still nearly hear the screech of tires, practically _feel_ my body contorting over the hood as nature had never intended, the final sight of the thing seared into my memory. In the indeterminate time that followed, it bothered me that I couldn't figure out the make and model. I'd never been a car enthusiast, never considered them important for more than carting people around, but felt that knowing the precise cause of my current predicament was important.

Ridiculous attention to detail was always something of a flaw of mine.

No matter what it was that hit me, _definitely some kind of SUV, too big and boxy for anything else_, I thought, the result was the same: Darkness, warmth, and an indecipherable murmur on the edge of hearing, any and all of which I attributed to my brain making things up in response to total sensory deprivation. When the pain started, a crushing sensation from every angle, it was almost a relief. It meant that everything was still hooked up. Even if I'd broken every bone in my body, it was an improvement over paralyzed and a huge step up from comatose.

Some time later the crushing stopped and, with a thrill, I could feel distinct sensation. There was softness all around, something firm beneath, and the air was comparatively chill and dry. The last was the first I noticed, because breathing was more difficult than I could ever remember and more precious than I could ever describe, the greedy lungfuls stolen from the air both painful and glorious. I could scarcely think amidst the excitement.

Long minutes later I managed to pry open my eyes and my elation died. Even with my vision blurred beyond usefulness, I could tell the scale of everything was off, giants looming all around. I realized the firmness below was not a bed, but a set of arms. I knew then I hadn't woken up. My brain was merely becoming more creative in it's lies, playing what must have been the first moments of my life out of boredom.

Pain I could take, but this? No, this was too much. Panic rising in my tiny chest, I let loose a wail.

[||]8[||]

It was impossible to say for certain when it was that I decided that this was as close to real as could reasonably be hoped for, but the cracks in the replay theory appeared as soon as my vision cleared beyond blurs. I'd visited the hospital of my birth a few times, and was pretty sure that it wasn't made of sandstone.

As if to underline the revelation that everything I knew about the world was wrong, I was carried through the compound gate and saw the outside for the first time. Stone and sand and, most of all, _heat_ were all around me. Everything was new and unfamiliar and, in trying to take in everything, I paid attention to very few specifics. If I'd taken a moment to focus, I might have figured things out a little sooner. As it was, all I knew was that this seeming fantasy was no longer bound by past experience in all but the loosest ways, and that the few signs I saw were in Japanese. Moments later, the gentle rocking motion of the woman I would come to call my mother's arms and the unfamiliar warmth lulled my tiny form to sleep. By the time I was aware again, I was already tucked away in the nursery of what I would come to call home.

The next few weeks began my reputation as a rather strange child. I was, by turns, almost unresponsive and enormously inquisitive as I tried to shake off the dream. One day I would do my best to block out the world, hoping my subconscious would take the hint and get me out of there. The next I'd struggle to get my tiny, weak limbs to cooperate as I tried to push the boundaries of the fantasy and take some measure of control. And while I resolutely failed to make any progress on those fronts, I did manage to learn a few things.

First and foremost, I learned that if I wanted something, my only real option was screaming. Well, crying, really. There's very little difference for an infant.

I learned that I had a sister, who took great joy in alternately playing with me and taking my toys. The former I soon became enormously grateful for, because being an infant is possibly the most boring thing that an adult mind can be subjected to. The latter eventually started bothering her more than me, because there were plenty of toys, and none nearly as fun as seeing her get flustered when I flat out ignored her.

I also learned that my father was someone important or wealthy. Being carried through the house daily revealed the massive scale of it, and the size of my nursery assured me that I was no servant's child. My father was also obviously wealthy enough to afford and require security, as my mother and I were often accompanied by the most terrifying man I had ever laid eyes on. The man never threatened, at least that I understood, and was rarely unkind, but moved with a swift, purposeful confidence that said he was safe anywhere, because he was always the most dangerous thing in the room.

An embarrassing amount of time later, I learned that this man _was_ my father.

Finally, after much strained listening as I attempted to decipher the language, I learned that my name was Kankuro. I also learned that however adult a mind I might have had, my mouth wasn't clever enough to obey it. Speaking _any_ language, let alone this new one, was going to take awhile.

All the while, I'd done my best to ignore the constant itch running through my veins. The sensation was never quite painful, but it was often uncomfortable and always unfamiliar. I tried to assure myself that it was some small level of feedback from my actual body as it complained of it's condition, but my resolve that this was fiction was wearing away. Occasionally I would humor the idea of reincarnation, and wonder if this was just what babies felt as they got used to having bodies.

[||]8[||]

Around six months after my arrival I was sitting in the nursery flipping intently through a picture book. No words, which was mildly disappointing, though I doubted I'd be able to get much out of them since I'd barely grasped the basics of the spoken word. Despite having gone through the slim bundle of pages a number of times already, there was still the possibility that I could glean a little more information by going through it again. _Not particularly enlightening,_ I considered, _but I might get a few cultural clues out of it._ Men breathing fire at giant scorpions, after all, certainly wouldn't have qualified as baby book material back where I'd come from.

In any case, with my sister, whose named I'd discovered to be Temari after teasing it out of conversations between she and my mother, was gone at the moment, so there wasn't anything more entertaining at hand anyway. Most mornings were like this, my mother reading in the corner while I did the best to amuse myself, having proved to be a fairly self sufficient child, and Temari was off doing what I'd eventually learn was training.

Towards noon the routine was broken, as it was on occasion, by a knock on the door , the man on the other side dipping his head in respect before asking something of my mother. I listened intently, though all I'd been able to extract from the exchange on any occasion was that my mother's name was Karura.

She answered in the same soft voice she always used, so at odds with my new father's hard, dry tone. Every other time this had happened she had sent for a servant to watch over me while she attended to whatever business had come up, but now, seeing me crawling towards the door (being able to get around on my own, even on my hands and knees, was a recent and much appreciated development), she reached a different course of action. She murmured something that I was sure included the term _'good boy'_, and bent down to gather me into her arms before stepping into the hall.

I knew right away that we weren't headed to another part of the family chambers that I'd grown accustomed to, instead we descended to ground floor, a set of guards falling into position to either side as we emerged into the streets. Now that I was aware and, more importantly, capable of supporting my own head, I tried to take in everything, my mother giggling as I turned my head this way and that. Sand and stone, as far as the eye could see, even coloring the air slightly as breezes swept up the rough particles. There were patches of color here and there, but they were all dull and washed out, signs and banners bleached under the sun and scoured by harsh winds. Scattered about were a few stalls selling various wares, but it was obvious that whatever place this was didn't get much in the way of trade.

Eventually we came to a strange, almost spherical building, men at the door offering bows after a moment of inspection. After ascending to the top of the building and passing through a set of heavy doors, my mother carried me into what I assumed was my father's office. I frowned in thought as he welcomed my mother and I. I'd seen my father often, not as much as my mother but nearly every day, but I'd never seen him in his robes of office. And yet, somehow I felt I'd seen it before. The hat, in particular, seemed familiar.

Thankfully my parents were used to my odd moods and I was treated to one of my father's rare, small smiles. Terrifying as the man was (sometimes, when he was in a bad mood, I could swear I could _feel_ him long before he arrived), he'd never actually been anything but nice to me, and I felt a touch guilty for thinking him frightening.

The two of them exchanged pleasantries, but my father seemed distracted by something. Kurara shot him an inquisitive glance, but any question she may have had was forestalled by the doors being pushed open without ceremony. The woman on the other side was so shrunken with age that I almost took her to be a child, save for her lank, grey hair and wrinkled face. Despite her years, I couldn't help but notice that she walked with the same sort of deadly grace that my father did, simultaneously guarded and self assured, even if her gait occasionally hitched as old bones protested.

The woman, who filled me with the same dull familiarity that his father's robes had, spoke then, casting a glance my way before grumbling at my father. I didn't manage to catch any of the words I'd added to my vocabulary, but from the glare my father leveled at her I doubted any of it was polite.

The old woman merely tutted at father's disapproval and stepped towards my mother, who held me closer and took a defensive step back. For the first time, I felt my mother was as dangerous as my father was, her stance tensing and waves of hostility rolling off of her. My eyes went wide and I whipped my head about, trying to understand what was going on. In a movement too fast for me to follow, I suddenly found myself in the old woman's arms, my mother letting out an indignant noise even as my father gently restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.

A wrinkled hand was lifted over me and my eyes widened even further as the appendage was enveloped by a green glow which soon expanded to drift over my tiny form. I balled up my fists and made noises of complaint as the strange itch beneath my skin that I'd nearly forgotten about rose to a roar. I could feel it dancing next to my veins, unfamiliar and vaguely unpleasant but at the same time seeming so very right and alluring. For the first time since my rebirth, I felt as though I had power, as if with the strange energy thrumming through me I could accomplish anything. I was almost disappointed when, a moment later, the glow receded and the feeling faded to it's usual background level.

The old woman said something, which seemed to cause a spike of tension in my parents. After reveling in their discomfort for a moment she added something that made my mother relax and father's eyes narrow.

I was handed back to my mother and the conversation continued, but I'd ceased attempting to follow it, far too busy berating myself for somehow ignoring the obvious. _The books,_ I thought, listing all the clues I hadn't picked up on, _practically torn from the manga, the headbands on all the guards, the language, my new name... The god damned ridiculous hat!_ I'd studied every detail, but hadn't placed them in any context, hadn't even considered viewing them from this angle. Maybe I'd been in denial, but now that the experiences had been catalyzed by the old woman's demonstration there wasn't much doubt left.

Whatever the case, whether fantasy or reality (and this most recent revelation had turned that debate up yet again), I seemed to be stuck in the world of a half remembered anime that I'd never particularly loved to begin with. An anime about an escalating series of bloody conflicts and disasters initiated by madmen.

What was more, I seemed to have gotten born into a family of said madmen. Hell, I _was_ one of those madmen, and the fact that I'd turn into a good guy after a particularly bloody battle didn't help much.

_But maybe,_ I considered, reexamining the situation, _it doesn't have to happen that way._ I effectively knew the future, parts of it at least. Being in a village far away from the main cast meant I didn't have quite as much information as I'd like, but it also meant I was less likely to catastrophically alter the timeline.

I also had chakra, I noted, recalling the giddy sense of power I'd felt when medical chakra bolstered my own for a moment. It had been scary and painful, but also exhilarating and empowering. If the future were like that, dangerous but thrilling, well... It wasn't a life I would have picked, but I thought it was one I could live with.

Suddenly exhausted, I fell asleep in my mother's arms.

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A/N: One day, fanfic authors will come up with something better than car accidents to kill our inserts. That day is not today.

I feel I should explain that last scene, as I hadn't quite anticipated how hard it would be to write a scene in the first person when said person doesn't speak the language. According to the wiki, all three of the Sand Siblings were checked for compatibility with Shukaku, and it wasn't until Gaara that they came up positive. I figured that Chiyo, being the one to do the sealing, would be the one most likely to do the checking, and decided it would also make for a decent first jutsu to tell Kankuro where he was.

Reviews are welcome and encouraged.


	2. Adventures In Child Being

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my spear and fire pit. The war goes well, but the gulls hold the northern shore.

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**Chapter 2: Adventures In Child Being**

I spoke my first word at eight months old. The word was "testing," said in passable English after spending a few days making the attempt, and thus was regarded as the usual gibberish produced by babies by my family. I'd gotten a better handle on the language of my new home, but had decided I should get my mouth up to speed before attempting to speak it. A week later, having gotten my vocal dexterity up to par, I said my first word in my adoptive tongue. Carefully calculated to garner favor and, hopefully, put me on a faster track, I might have felt a touch guilty about manipulating my parents if I didn't suspect that they would approve of the guile.

The word was "shinobi," spoken as mother read to me from a picture book and accompanied by a stubby digit pointed at the warrior on the page.

"That's right," my mother cheerfully answered, "a shinobi, just like daddy." I may not have had the verbal agility to speak most of the language, but I could understand a fair bit by then.

A week later and I'd added "hungry," "good," "bad," "play," and "mine" to my spoken vocabulary to mother's delight and father's quiet approval. It had taken a long time, but I could finally communicate instead of screeching until the problem went away. What was more, with my motor skills improving to the point that I was sure walking was only weeks away, I could finally attain some degree of independence.

That said, I decided to slow down just a hair. Being regarded as clever would be useful, but I doubted I'd enjoy the pressures of a prodigy, especially when I inevitably plateaued. I wasn't actually that advanced, after all, I'd just gotten a head start.

Beyond that though, I didn't do much to conceal my oddities. I knew that I wasn't going to be content to trace out the path set before me by my fictional predecessor, the 'real' Kankuro. I didn't even know how he'd behaved before the chuunin exams, so there was no hope of emulation. It had taken all of a minute to discard the idea of hiding any actions until very late in the game, I was surrounded by people with a lifetime of training in finding and keeping secrets, and my own father was among the best of them. They'd eventually spot my reticence and drag the rest out, at which point it was probably a toss up between the loony bin and being executed as a demon.

Better to just act on my instincts and restrict the lies to my past rather than pretend to be someone I wasn't. Ninja, especially powerful or clever ones, tended to come packaged with a number of eccentricities, so any odd habits that carried over shouldn't be _too_ devastating. After all, one strange act would draw attention, but one mixed in with a hundred was just Kankuro being Kankuro.

Thus, the next time Temari seized one of my toys I spent a long moment eying it contemplatively before nodding and declaring "Yours!" before crawling over to the box the rest were kept in. Taking each out in turn, I put on a show of examining each before either setting it in a pile beside me and saying "mine," or hurling it at my sister and repeating his first declaration. It was mostly arbitrary, but every one of the small, durable books kept in the box were deposited in a careful stack at my side. They might not have anything else to teach me, but I'd always loved books and refused to show even the simple ones anything but respect.

Every toy I deigned to toss Temari's way, I noted, was caught swiftly and effectively by her small, nimble fingers, even as her arms began filling up with the playthings. Back home, that would have been a remarkable feat of dexterity for a child that couldn't be more than three. Here, I suspected it was merely above average for a ninja child. I knew that she spent a few hours a day training, honing the reflexes that would one day snatch blades out of the air as easily as they did the doll I'd just tossed.

Finally, coming to a noise maker that I absolutely detested, I shrugged before tossing behind the box, wincing as the drum rattled between it and the wall. "Bad," I said simply, plucking a book from the top of his pile and flipping it open to the sound of my mother's gentle laughter.

[||]8[||]

My first birthday was a family affair. Being the Kazekage's son I had half expected a parade, but Suna didn't seem like a place for such a frivolous celebration and neither did my father. Still, my mother seemed to have convinced him that a small celebration would be appropriate.

Or possibly he'd done it on his own, I considered, watching him from my place in mother's lap. He was smiling, occasionally even laughing at either my mother's words or Temari's antics. I'd grown wary of him when I'd first realized who he was, what he would do. This was a man who would seal a demon in his own son and wield him as a weapon against an allied village. He should have been a sociopath, but, somehow, I didn't see any of that in him. He was a hard man, there was no doubt in my mind about that, but not to the extent I would have expected.

I blinked out of my reverie as my mother offered me some kind of small, soft pastry that I could manage to chew. I snatched it from her with embarrassing eagerness and used still clumsy fingers to cram it into my mouth. It brought a measure of relief to the ache of teething and was delightfully sweet. I hadn't been particularly fond of sweets before my death, but I'd come from a world so saturated in sugar that the lack made me miss it, both the flavor and my old life. The taste reminded me of home, and consequently of all I'd lost. Whether fantasy or reality, I'd been away for a full year now.

Temari, seeing the tell tale signs that I was about to enter one of my moods and recede into myself, pouted. "Baby get _all this_," she groused, waving her arms about, "an' he doesn't even _like_ it!" This was the first birthday that hadn't been her own as far as she was concerned, and the very concept set her on edge. It might have just been the terrible twos, but I thought I could already see the 'cruelest of all kunoichi' title she would claim.

"Temari!" My mother exclaimed, "be nice to your brother or I'll put you straight to bed!"

My sister turned wide imploring eyes upon my father, who snorted. "Behave yourself, this is your brother's day."

Temari responded by crossing her arms and shooting a glare my way, but not raising any fuss beyond that. Satisfied that things probably wouldn't escalate for the moment and eager to move past the brief unpleasantness, my mother lifted one of the slim packages from the small stack of gifts and pressed it into my hands. It was wrapped in red paper and easy enough to guess from the shape that it was some kind of book. Interested despite my distant thoughts, I tugged the wrapping off and allowed a small smile as I was proven correct. My grin widened and my melancholy faded as I briefly opened it and caught sight of actual text inside. All huge kanji that probably didn't say anything more than a single word a page, but it was still actual words instead of just pictures. I had missed reading, and this small step towards literacy was genuinely heart warming.

"Thank you," I crowed, closing the book and holding it to my chest.

"I told you he would like them," my mother said, hugging me close as she grinned triumphantly in my father's direction.

My father bowed his head and spread his hands, smirking as he replied. "As ever, I was a fool to question you."

The celebration continued in much the same fashion, taking treats between gifts and finding my spirits lifted. A fair number of them were books, my mother having observed how much I enjoyed the paltry set in the nursery. Mixed in were a handful of more typical toys, balls and small stuffed animals. The last was carried to me by a cloud of gold dust, which I dimly remembered as the Kazekage's bloodline but still found enthralling, my father chuckling at my wide eyes. It was a set of round edged wooden shuriken that I ran my fingers along for a moment before my mother put them with the rest of my gifts. I half expected her to shoot my father a disapproving glare, but she didn't bat an eyelash. She was probably a kunoichi, even if a retired one, and toy weapons would only be appropriate for a shinobi child.

By then my head was nodding, my young body still requiring far more rest than the adult one I had been used to. I started slightly as my mother passed me to father and the two walked me to my room, but soon began drifting again. Soon I was tucked into my crib and my parents quietly wishing me goodnight. The last thing I saw before my leaden eyelids slid shut was a flash of movement as one of the guards slid into position outside my window.

Life was full of similar juxtapositions, where everything would seem almost normal one moment, and the next the illusion would be shattered by an intrusion from the ninja world. Shuriken at birthday parties, my father's seeming superpowers, armed guards at bed time, the way my parents would tense ever so slightly at unexpected sounds. I was being raised by trained killers, but I was finding it hard to care about the no doubt copious amounts of blood on their hands. Hard to resent them for not being my 'real' parents. _Maybe,_ I thought dimly, _this is what Stockholm syndrome feels like._

_Or maybe, _a small but insistent thought answered, _it's just what family feels like._

[||]8[||]

Over the next few months my routine shifted. Having mastered walking to the point that I was no longer in danger of toppling over while crossing the room, it had apparently been decided that I was in good enough shape to begin training. Each morning I would trail mother and Temari down to a courtyard that was floored with packed sand and scattered with boulders. The edges were shaded by overhangs and had plots of dirt growing carefully tended shrubs.

None of it was too strenuous, at the beginning I just joined Temari for part of our morning stretches as mother led us. My young body didn't find them very strenuous, but every time I got one well enough to do on my own another was added, my participation growing from five minutes to fifteen as I grasped them one by one. I suspected that my more aware mind was moving me along faster than usual, but I had no idea how to play stupid at stretching so it couldn't be helped.

I also learned that the wooden shuriken were meant to be more than toys as I learned to throw them. I wasn't expected to make them go very far, the target of a wooden post five feet away being the best my small frame could muster, but I was shown how to plant my feet and move my arms.

Afterwords, the two of us would enter into a game of tag or hide and seek. I had expected Temari to outclass me in tag, she had enough coordination to run properly where I still had to spread my arms for balance at any pace faster than a walk, but she trounced me just as thoroughly in hide and seek. She stalked around boulders as I checked them, scarcely making a sound. Soon enough I learned to look for the tiny indentations she left in the sand, but it still took me much longer to find her than for her to find me.

A couple weeks in, mother deigned to join a game, making it two on one to keep it 'fair'. Even pretending that she couldn't spot us right away it didn't take thirty seconds for her to haul us out from whatever rocks we hid behind. When it was her turn we spent a solid ten minutes looking before giving up, only for her to haul us into the air by our ankles as she stood up, shaking sand from her hair and laughing at how we hadn't noticed her literally beneath our feet, the two of us squawking in indignation before joining her laughter. Tag wasn't even an option with her casually darting at speeds too fast for our eyes to follow.

All told, the little workout never lasted more than an hour before Temari would get led off to a more formal training session and mother and I would return to the nursery. There, I would crawl into her lap and she'd read to me out of one of the picture books until I nodded off, exhausted by the morning's session. In the afternoon there would be less strenuous games that I quickly surmised were disguised training, like catch or a version of rock-paper-scissors that used the five elements. There were tickle fights where I noticed she would go for vital areas as I tried to slap her hands away, and once she even sang softly as she struck, "throat, spine, lungs, liver, jugular, subclavian, kidney, heart," which left me shivering in more than just laughter. It was moments like these that reminded me that, while not the worst, Suna had never been called _nice_.

Absorbed in training and learning the language in both spoken and written form, I couldn't help but feel that I'd forgotten something. It wasn't until three months into my training when my mother, smiling brightly, told me I'd be getting a little brother that I realized what it was.

I'd known Gaara would be an issue, I'd made plans to reach out to him, try and rehabilitate him early, maybe even stop his psychotic outlook from manifesting to begin with. But those were all abstract schemes that I'd failed to tie to what had become my world, focusing on the details without seeing the big picture. It had been all too easy to see everything in front of me as real and all those future events as just a story I'd read. Too easy to forget that before I could do anything with Gaara, my mother, and after more than a year of being in her gentle presence near constantly I had no trouble thinking of her as such, would die.

[||]8[||]

Six months later my stretches had extended to take up a half hour, though mother couldn't quite lead us in several of them due to her condition. Temari was alternately thrilled by the idea of a baby and distraught at having our parents' attention divided even further. Mother was her usual soft, cheery self, if a touch less agile, and father was doting on her, a surreal sight if I'd ever seen one.

And, as for me, I'm not ashamed to admit that I got a little bit clingy. Who wouldn't, knowing what was going to happen? I'd viewed my foreknowledge as a boon when I'd first arrived, but in those months of her pregnancy I would have gladly lived in ignorance. My father disapproved when I first resisted joining Temari with the tutor, but mother convinced him to give me a little more time before I had to.

So when Chiyo arrived at the nursery and told my mother to follow her I naturally panicked, lifting myself off the floor and darting to my mother's side as she stood from her seat in the corner. I don't know what I'd hoped to accomplish, no one would listen to a toddler, but I had to do _something_. "Mama, don't go," I pleaded, wrapping my arms around her leg and clinging as fiercely as I could.

The old woman cast her calculating eyes over me for a moment before turning it upon my mother and arching an eyebrow. Chuckling, my mother ruffled my hair as she said, "he's been worried about me for months. I'm sure his father will watch him during the procedure."

"Fine," Chiyo answered, "bring the brat along, it's no concern of mine if you coddle him." She turned and left as my mother pried me off her leg and took my hand, leading me off into the compound. Eventually we arrived at a chamber that I vaguely identified as the one I'd been born in, the Kage's family too vulnerable to assassination at the hospital. My father was already there in his robes of office and accompanied by ANBU and medic-nin, and a man I recognized as my uncle.

"He _insisted_ on coming," mother said, smiling at my father's inquisitive gaze.

His eyes lingered on me for a moment and I could feel him weighing me up, considering my swift advancement next to my recent displays of sensitivity. Of weakness. Ours was a line of powerful shinobi, and even if I didn't have the family's wildly erratic magnetic bloodline he expected me to carry on that tradition. I had every intention of fulfilling that expectation, chakra was too alluring and weakness too dangerous for anything else, but my refusal to join the tutor, the way I stuck to mother... It didn't speak of strength.

My uncle broke the moment with a laugh, "so, now you're making all _three_ men in the family wait on you, Karura?" He teased, "let this be a lesson to you, Kankuro, women control our lives and none of us will ever escape." This earned him a slap to the back of the head from mother, and father's gaze softened as it was drawn back to his wife. "Well it's true!" He declared, raising an arm to ward off further assaults.

"Obviously," my mother responded primly, "but you're not supposed to _say_ it."

He rounded on father with wide eyes, "Kazekage! Defend your loyal subject!"

"Sorry Yashamaru," my father deadpanned, "acceptable losses to a superior force." My uncle bowed his head in defeat.

Despite everything, the exchange brought a smile to my face, and even Chiyo cackled to herself as she took my mother's arm and led her into the room. Both my mother and her brother had a gift for putting people at ease. Suna would have been a darker place without them... Would _become_ a darker place without them, I supposed.

The thought was sobering and my smile faded as a medic closed the door and the three of us took a seat on a bench opposite it in the hallway, my uncle lifting me up to sit between he and my father. "Don't worry kid," he said, ruffling my hair as I looked up to him, "Granny Chiyo is the greatest seal master in Suna, and I know for a fact that every one of those medics is the best we've got."

I tried to smile back at him, but his words brought little comfort. Suna wasn't known for sealing or medicine.

[||]8[||]

I don't know how long we'd waited, but my father shared my worried expression. Some time before we'd begun to hear Chiyo barking urgent orders to the medics. A little after that and she'd shown her face briefly to order Yashamaru to join them and help. Now my father waited anxiously while I sank into despair. I'd begun sniffling and, instead of the reprimand I half expected, he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to his side. That, if anything, only seemed to make it worse. My father was a hard man, but that only meant he was reliable, an unbending pillar. If he'd begun to crumble...

Finally, Chiyo opened the door and stepped out, head down and expression distraught. "I'm sorry," she murmured sadly, "she doesn't have much time."

In an instant my father was on his feat and across the hall, killing intent pouring off him as he pinned Chiyo to the wall and half formed gold dust glimmered in the air around him. "_What did you do?_" He snarled, the old woman's acceptance of his wrath only serving to stoke his anger.

"Most children have their own distinct chakra network by this stage of pregnancy," she answered in a tone both clinical and sad, "but theirs still intermingled. When Shukaku's demonic chakra was added... The boy is protected by the seal, but Karura has nothing to stave it off."

I couldn't make out what my father shouted next, having gotten off the bench myself and darted through the open door. Inside, the medics stood morosely in the back, one bracing himself against the wall, all of them clearly exhausted. My uncle stood on the opposite side of the bed, hands cloaked in green and pressed to his sister. He didn't even look up as I ran to the bedside, focusing every ounce of his concentration on maintaining the flow of medical chakra.

I could hear her speaking softly as I gripped the side of the bed and tried to haul myself up, cursing my stature all the way. I managed to get my chin just over the edge and was greeted by the sight of my mother lying on her side, one arm curled around the unnaturally small form of my newborn brother. I was shocked by how weak she looked. She had never radiated the same invulnerable presence that father had, but she had always been strong, seeming able to protect me from anything.

"Kankuro," she said, eyes shifting lazily to me, the soft edge of cheer in her voice tearing at me even more than the weakness in it. "This is your brother, Gaara. He'll need you to watch over him." Her gaze unfocused and slid back to Gaara and her voice became too soft for me to follow.

"I... I promise, mama," I answered, tears now streaming freely.

Moments later, when my father swept into the room and Chiyo pulled me gently away, I had already closed myself off from the world. I'd seen all I needed to. Suna could crumble, Konoha could burn, and the whole of the elemental nations could fall to ruin and I wouldn't care, so long as I kept that promise. I had a mission, and I intended to see it through.

* * *

A/N: Trying to get through childhood without dragging too much, but it's gonna take awhile since I've got to develop a father who got all of a dozen lines and a village that only has enough named characters to count on my fingers. Didn't even have to use my thumbs.

Speaking of names, I'm open to suggestions for the Siblings' surname and the Kazekage's name. Names are hard guys, they're had and I don't understand Japanesse.


	3. Of Sand and Stone

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but this stack of seagull eggs. Their parents circle camp and call through the night for my blood. I fear I have made a mistake.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Of Sand And Stone**

There were more people at mother's funeral than I'd ever seen together since coming to Suna. Mother had taken me on occasional walks through the village, but even at dusk, when it was coolest and most active, there had never been this many.

Now it was high noon and the heavy black clothing we all wore was stifling. Ninja lined the street, rows of civilians standing beyond them as my father led the procession from the compound, his personal guard following with the casket and Temari, Yashamaru, Gaara in his arms, and I bringing up the rear. There had been a ceremony earlier, but it had felt hollow, empty words shrouding my father's guilt and anger as he tried to placate a village that had lost a beloved member. No, this would be the part I would remember, the sea of grieving faces serving as fitting backdrop to our own mourning as we descended into the catacombs.

Suna didn't bury their dead, the sand and scavengers of the desert made doing so an absurd proposition. Civilians were typically cremated, and ninja were interred in the warren of tunnels carved through the bedrock the village was built on. There, in the cold dry dark, their bodies could go years before succumbing to rot.

So it was that our small group passed from the searing heat of the sun into the cool depths by way of a passage carved into the canyon wall, to say our goodbyes in a more personal setting. The casket bearers took torches from brackets as they passed. It would have been possible to rig the tunnels with electric lights, but useless. This place belonged to the dead, the living but momentary trespassers in their domain.

It took a quarter hour to get to the set of passages reserved for the Kages and their families. There, the guards set the casket on the ground, hung their torches on the walls, and retreated into the shadows. They were still there, just out of sight, but the illusion of privacy was important. "Karura," my father began, a sad smile appearing as a slow stream of gold flowed into his hand, "you were my raincloud, and though gone I will always treasure the shade you offered." Anywhere else, except perhaps Kumo, a raincloud was a cause for gloom. Here, it brought life and a relief from the harsh sun.

His eyes watered as the gold dust in his hand shaped itself into a lily and I felt more than saw the burst of chakra he poured into it before placing it atop the casket. The edges of my mouth flickered upwards for a moment as I caught the meaning, beyond the flower's usual place at funerals. My father had said his piece, and felt it complete. He could have spoken for weeks of his wife's virtues, but it would have been adding worthless accents to something whose beauty and worth was self evident. A long speech would have just been gilding the lily.

My uncle went next, laying down a set of worn but well cared for kunai. "You always did run ahead of the rest of us, sis," he said with a soft chuckle that was a hair's breadth from being a sob, "and every other time I would have chased after you..." His eyes glanced briefly over Gaara, Temari, and I, "but, like always, you seem to be telling me what to do. Try not to get too far while I take care of things here, kay?"

Temari stepped forward, sniffling as she placed a hair ribbon. "I... I'll miss you," she murmured, too young to articulate anything more complex.

Finally, I laid down the book she'd given me for my birthday. "I _promise_," I said resolutely, though my voice still quivered.

Appropriately, Gaara chose that moment to wake up and begin crying in my uncle's arms.

[||]8[||]

In the weeks following the funeral, I was surprised to find that Gaara remained in the household. I'd been dredging up as many memories of Suna and the Sand Siblings as I could from the rapidly receding viewings of the anime, and was positive that he'd been raised by our uncle.

In a way he still was, Yashamaru having moved in to lend what help he could and father having thrown himself into his work in his grief. Always a distant man, he only grew more so without Karura. We were reminders of what he'd lost, and denial was less painful than confrontation. My uncle felt the same reminders, I could see the pain in his eyes when Temari or I unconsciously used a habit we'd picked up from mother, but for him every reminder of his sister was to be treasured. I wasn't sure if she'd extracted the same promise from him that she had from me, but I had no doubt that he would have done the same regardless.

He led the morning routine from then on, joining in the games more frequently than mother had, casually outclassing us and laughing the whole way. He was, by and large, a much more physical teacher than his sister had been, mixing short taijutsu forms into our stretches and occasionally acting as a moving target for Temari as I worked to increase my range. I was slightly frustrated that he read to me from fewer books, preferring to take us on walks through the village in the afternoon and tell whatever stories, real or imagined, came to mind.

Temari naturally took it the hardest, getting sullen and sometimes crying when Yashamaru greeted her in the mornings instead of mother, and venting anger in the little taijutsu practice we did. I couldn't blame her, of the family only she and Gaara were genuinely children, and Gaara didn't know that he'd lost anything. Offering the occasional hug when she seemed out of sorts was the best I could do.

As far as I went, with mother gone father seemed ready to put his foot down on my joining Temari with the tutor, but found me going without complaint the day after the funeral. I'd only hung back out of a desire to steal what time with her that I could, so now that she'd passed... Besides, I'd have to be strong if I wanted to keep my promise.

[||]8[||]

"Focus, Temari," the old chuunin assigned to teach us lectured, "you must be swift, decisive. Hesitation can only lead to errors."

My sister nodded firmly, her brow furrowed in concentration as she readied her hand. She swept it before her in a short burst, pausing a moment before leaning forward to inspect her work.

Glancing up from my own studies for a moment, I observed the stroke her brush had made across the paper. The middle was solid and straight, but the start had a frayed look to it and the end dribbled slightly. I returned to my book, not envying her more advanced tutelage in the least as I practiced reading the basic kanji. Learning an entirely new alphabet from the ground up was proving more difficult than the language itself had. With the language I could draw connections with words in English, though grammar had been a stumbling block for awhile. In writing I had to completely recalibrate to the new alphabet.

And, as the Kazekage's children and heirs to the Sabidou line, we could look forward to learning the full, formal alphabet with all of it's thousands of specific symbols. Not to mention the artful calligraphy currently vexing my sister. My hobby was beginning to look like a headache.

"Better," our tutor intoned, "but you must reign in the force behind your stroke and lift it away more quickly at the finish. You are no longer scraping lines in the sand," he continued, referring to the rough figures she'd drawn before moving onto ink and paper, "you need not press so firmly."

I had been attending the sessions for a little over three months by that point and had settled into their routine of lessons on reading, writing, numbers and light politics, interspersed with light physical work. Both our bodies were too young to begin building strength without the risk of permanently damaging our musculature, but our endurance, speed, and dexterity were fair game. All of it was training that civilian born shinobi wouldn't receive until they entered the academy at six, but there was an understanding that clan children, especially those of prominent ninja such as clan head or, of course, our father, would have a leg up and be expected to perform spectacularly.

We traded off on tasks that required supervision, as my sister was over a year ahead in her studies. Temari would run laps while I was drilled in basic hand signs, or, as now, I would practice reading while she did brushwork. In a handful of areas we were close enough that we could be taught in the same lesson, or the lessons themselves were universal across skill level, and were tutored together.

I was startled out of my studies by my sister's yelp and looked up to see a toppled ink well and our teacher liberally liberally spattered with ink. "Perhaps a touch less swiftness," he said, scattering the ink from his hands with a burst of chakra and moving swiftly to try and do the same to his clothes before the stains could set.

I'd seen plenty of jutsu used since I'd realized where I was, but had largely ignored them as something for another time. A simple substitution would drain my miniscule reserves to critical levels and probably not even complete besides. I'd figured that the lesson plan formulated for the Kage's children would be designed to maximize potential anyways, so I may as well let the experts do their jobs. But, considering the casual use of chakra just displayed, and feeling the distant tingle of it beneath my skin, I realized those lessons were formulated for children. Scatterbrained, impatient children who could barely sit still for half an hour and didn't have the common sense to avoid potentially lethal exhaustion. I was fairly certain I could focus better than that.

Hesitantly, I tried tugging on the barely perceptible sensation. I'd grown used to what had once been a bothersome itch and it had become so familiar that only faint memory and the certain knowledge that it was there allowed me to feel it at all, like a scent so pervasive it could only be detected by it's absence. It was no wonder chakra use didn't spontaneously flare up in civilians, another year and I wouldn't have been able to touch on it at all, not without training.

Feeling it apparently didn't give me any help in using it, as the chakra stubbornly refused to move to my will. It was like trying to control my own heartbeat. I could quicken or slow the pulse through anger or calm, but attempting to choose the moment and strength of each beat was impossible. _Except it can't be,_ I reminded myself, _ninja use this stuff all the time. And aren't monks back home supposed to be able to stop their hearts on command?_ Lifting my hand from the workbook and staring at my palm, I concentrated on the sensation, focused on the thought of the chakra in my hand growing larger, of my vital energies shifting from their natural flow as they bent to my will.

After a long moment I thought I could detect the barest difference in the sensation there. It may have been a trick of my mind, but I could swear that the chakra in my hand was ever so slightly weightier than it had been before. My brow furrowed as I tried to gather more, trying to wrap my mind around guiding the pulse of energy. My awareness of it seemed to sharpen as I worked it, but again it was so slight that it may have been a trick of my mind. Still, it was something, and-

"Kankuro!" Our teacher snapped, and I looked up guiltily as I realized that he'd called my name a couple times before. "Concentrate on your studies."

"Yes, sensei," I answered sheepishly, returning my gaze to the book and trying to concentrate. I didn't get much farther in my reading by the time the segment ended and we were set to throwing kunai. My mind was abuzz as I tried to recall what exercises the anime had used that might be within my ability. Tree walking, or cliff walking as the case would be here, seemed as far out of my reach as actual jutsu, likely to exhaust me in a few steps. Water walking was obviously out for a whole host of reasons. There had been another one, something about leaves? Damaging any of the plants that managed to grow in Suna just seemed _wrong_, but perhaps I could find a few that had fallen off on their own, or substitute with paper...

[||]8[||]

By the time we finally returned to the living quarters that afternoon I'd managed to put the matter aside. It wasn't something that I'd be able to solve in a day, a week, maybe not even a month or a year. After all, shinobi hopefuls spent long years in the academy and were only expected to learn a handful of techniques that actually utilized chakra. Given that a village would wring every ounce of proficiency it could from Genin, I doubted it would be easy to skip ahead in the curriculum.

Besides, further contemplation would have detracted from my favorite part of the day. I pushed open the door to the nursery and was greeted by the typical sight of Yashamaru cradling a sleeping Gaara. "Hey Temari, Kankuro," my uncle said, somehow managing to combine his usual exuberant tone with a volume quiet enough not to wake my brother, "how were your lessons?"

"Fine, I guess," my sister answered from behind me, and I caught her eyes flick to the bundle in our uncle's arms, "I'll be in my room."

My uncle sighed as she turned and continued down the hall. Some days she refused to be near Gaara, and she was never comfortable around him. I couldn't really blame her, he'd shown up the same day our mother had gone, and it was a hard association to break, especially for someone her age.

"You're just mad that I trounced you in math!" I shot at her back, turning her slogging retreat into a stomping promise of vengeance. An angry Temari was infinitely preferable to a gloomy Temari, even if she would probably end up holding my head in the sand over it tomorrow. That, and it was always nice to score one against a smug elder sibling. _Ah, math,_ I thought, _you don't care what language I'm using, do you?_

"Kankuro, watch Gaara for a moment, would you?" My uncle asked, "I'm gonna go check on your sister." Some would have questioned the wisdom of leaving a boy not even two years old to take care of an infant, but in the time since his birth I'd proven myself trustworthy in that regard. That, and Yashamaru had been there when I'd made my promise, he knew how committed I was.

In answer I squirmed my way up onto the couch next to him, and my uncle slid Gaara's swaddled form into my lap before standing himself and cracking his back. "Thanks kiddo, I'll be right back," he said before slipping out the door.

Shifting him slightly in an attempt to keep the both of us comfortable, I smiled down at my little brother. I was again struck again by just how _small_ he was. I'd grown so used to everyone towering over me that finding someone smaller in my arms was endearing in and of itself. Held like this, he seemed simultaneously fragile and eminently protectable, his seeming harmlessness and innocence allowing me to forget for a moment all the myriad obstacles waiting in the future. The dark racoonish rings around his eyes did little to spoil the effect.

He began to stir and I leaned over slightly to seize one of the picture books left scattered across the couch from similar events. I grinned slightly as I saw it was one of the first I'd taken to, the one about the shinobi and the giant scorpions. "Let me tell you about... Oh, let's call him Sunamaru," I began as Gaara's eyes opened and his small hand reached out for the colorful images on the page. "And his battle with the great demon Sasori..."

There were no words in the book, but that was fine. I'd always fancied myself something of a story teller.

[||]8[||]

Close to nine months had passed since Gaara had joined our family, my second birthday had come and gone and the unbearable heat of summer had given way to the somewhat tolerable heat of autumn. I had finally mastered keeping a scrap of paper suspended over my palm for a solid half hour and was endeavoring to add a second to my other hand. Temari wasn't quite so reluctant around our brother and father had taken to stopping into the nursery after he left the office again. We were, dare I say, halfway to being a functional family.

Temari and I were climbing the stairs from the training rooms on the lower levels, a light spring in my sister's step celebrating that, while I'd managed to catch up in reading and the common alphabet, she was still miles ahead in calligraphy. Art had never been my strong suit, and for once a new body with fresh potential wasn't doing me any favors. Still pouting, I blinked as she stopped in her tracks after opening the nursery door.

"Who're you," she asked pointedly, "where's uncle?"

"I'm Naoko," the woman answered from inside the room, "Yashamaru has been called away on a long term mission, I'll be taking care of you from now on."

Eyes widening, I pushed past my sister to enter the room and surveyed the nursery. Having discovered crawling some months back, Gaara would typically be scooting about somewhere on the floor, gripping some toy or another that he'd stop now and again to gnaw on and ease the pains of teething. His ability to move around had enormously expanded the variety of games we could play and I'd been looking forward to him learning to walk.

He was nowhere to be found.

I rounded on Naoko, who was wearing the white robe like dress that many civilian women favored but with a hitaite drawn across her forehead, holding back blond hair so pale it bordered on white. She was smiling and bent forward with her hands on her knees in what I'm sure was an attempt to be friendly and inviting. At that moment I wouldn't have cared if she were trying to bring about world peace.

"Where's Gaara?" I spat with all the pique a two year old could muster, announcing that I would throw the tantrum to end all tantrums if I didn't get what I wanted. It was impossible for me to sound intimidating, but occasionally just being an angry toddler was just as effective.

The woman hesitated, probably not expecting such direct demand. "I don't know, Kankuro," she finally answered, "the brief only covered the two of you."

I studied her for a moment before giving a grudging nod. As Suna's Jinchuriki my brother's location would be closely guarded now that he was out of the direct protection of the Kazekage. In all likelihood Naoko hadn't been told anything about him and hadn't asked. There was only one person guaranteed to know where Gaara was, and I'd just have to wait for him.

I sat down in the far corner of the room, arms crossed as I brooded over the situation. Temari hesitated for a moment before shrugging and seizing a set of balls from the toy chest, snapping them at the wall and snatching them from the air on the rebound. The way I was catching up to her in some areas had only driven her to ensure her dominance in others, evident in the way she kept multiple balls in the air and ricocheting off multiple surfaces before returning to her. I spent a moment glaring at her for her nonchalant response to our brother's disappearance, but quashed the feeling. She'd barely begun to even like Gaara, of course she wouldn't react as forcefully as me.

Hours passed, my refusal to move spoiling my sister's desire to go outside and earning me a glare of her own. I knew it was immature, sitting there wouldn't make our father return any faster, but felt the situation merited a solid sulk.

Finally, father made his usual visit to the nursery. For a moment his appearance was enough to stall me. He looked tired in a way that he hadn't since mother's death, but where others might have seemed weak in such a state he only seemed more invulnerable, drawn into himself and defiant.

Still, I had made a promise.

"Where's Gaara," I demanded, getting to my feet and stalking forward. My father's eyes hardened as he turned them upon me. He loved us, in his way, but mother had been the only one he'd ever allowed argument from, and even she'd never taken the harsh tone I just had.

"You will show respect," he reprimanded, his tone not a request or command but a statement of fact. "Your brother is safe, that is all you need know."

"But-"

"He will be disciplined," he told Naoko as Temari watched the exchange with wide eyes.

"As you say, Kazekage," she answered with a deep bow as he turned to leave.

"_I promised her!_" I called at his retreating back, "I promised her I would watch him! _She wanted him here!_"

"_Your mother isn't-_" He cut himself off, and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly as he realized what he'd been about to say. "Karura wasn't Kazekage," he said softly, "it was not for her to decide what is best for this village, or this family. That burden is mine alone."

"_Please,_" I answered, all the venom gone from my voice. I thought I had seen a crack in his armor, something I could lever open to convince him. I was a fool to think whatever he kept within would be any kinder than what he showed without. "She would have-"

My voice choked out as suddenly I felt as though my heart was caught in a vice. I couldn't move, couldn't blink, could barely even breathe. My father turned slowly to face me, the killing intent pouring off him in waves. I'd felt it before, but that had been the barest trickle next to these floods, and never before had it been directed at me. Dark rings hung around his eyes and I could see the barest traces of Gold Dust in the air. I had expected rage or disappointment to be written across his face, but instead there was only weariness, a reluctance to add one more dark deed to a day that had already crushed him.

"You've always been clever, Kankuro," he said flatly, exhaustion ringing in his words. It had been a mistake to think that reluctance or tiredness would make him softer, that wearing him down would do anything to change his mind. A worn stone didn't vanish, it became sand, and anyone in Suna could tell you how dangerous sand was.

"But cunning is not wisdom, and you don't know as much as you think. We all have our burdens, our place in the way of things, and _you will learn yours._"

With that the intent vanished and he swept out of the room. I took deep ragged breaths as Temari curled in on herself and shivered. Even Naoko, who had to be at least a Chuunin, was visibly shaken.

It would be a long, long time before I challenged my father again.

It would be more than two years before I would lay eyes on my brother.

* * *

A/N: If I have one weakness, it's my complete inability to resist a pun. I was dead set on the golden flower and then 'gilded lily' clubbed me over the head and refused to leave. Apologies if it ruined the moment.

It's great to hear that people like my sympathetic Kazekage. It irked me when I first came up with this idea that just about every jerk in the series gets a Freudian excuse, from Zabuza to Tobi, but the best the Kazekage got was an appology. Being a hard man doesn't mean he's heartless. Of course, as should be evident, having a heart doesn't make him any softer...

I'd also like to thank everyone for their views, reviews, faves and follows. In particular I'd like to thank Colors of Iris for pointing out some errors in chapter one and .Current and Ywerse for assistance with names. You're all fantastic.

Oh, and from some of the reviews and some browsing I gather that I may be the first dude to do a Self Insert in the community? Not sure whether I should feel proud or awkward about that. Gonna go with prawk. Yes, I feel quite prawk about this.


	4. First Mission

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but vines and lumber. I must make my escape soon. I am hunted.

* * *

**Chapter 4: First Mission**

I dived behind cover, pressing my back to the boulder as a wave of kunai passed through the space I'd been standing an instant before. Stilling my heavy breathing, I listened for my opponents and was rewarded with the sound of them springing for their own cover. The siblings weren't direct fighters any more than I was, but there were still two of them and only one of me. I could only hope that my gambit would pay off.

I peaked out from behind the boulder and readied a set of shuriken, one bristling from between each of my fingers. A tense moment later Hikaru exploded from behind his own cover, running low to the ground with hands raised to deflect any attack. I ignored him, waiting for his sister to follow suit. The two of them had trained together from the crib and moved like a well oiled machine, each complimenting and covering the actions of the other.

But no matter how smoothly a machine functioned, the movement of one piece informed the action of the next. I threw my shuriken over and to the left of Hikaru an instant before Hisoka stepped from her own boulder and directly into their path. Taking out one would cripple the other, making the end of the fight a formality as far as I was concerned.

My self satisfied smirk faltered as Hikaru leaped into the air, knocking the lower spread of my attack aside as Hisoka rolled low under the remaining projectiles. Regaining her feet, the sister returned her own salvo of shuriken and I ducked back behind my boulder, despite already knowing that she wasn't aiming for me. Sure enough, a moment later I could hear the trap I'd laid firing prematurely as the trip wire was cut and the spring loaded kunai were launched at nothing before their target even reached them.

Giving up the position as lost as the two of them circled around from opposite sides of the boulder, I slapped an explosive tag against it and bolted for the nearest one. I scrambled over and caught a glimpse of them arriving at my last position just before I hit the ground and heard the tag go off. In an instant I was on my feet again, a kunai in either hand, looking warily to either side with my back to the rock. They'd learned just as many of my tricks as I'd learned theirs, there was little chance that the explosion had even touched either of them.

I cursed to myself as I heard the scuff of a sandal hitting the top of the rock as Hikaru took the same route I had, twisting through the air to land in facing me as he completed a seal. Even as his feet touched down I knew that his sister was behind me, completing her own seal.

"It's over, Kankuro!" The brother gloated, "no one escapes our Cage of Mirrors!"

I sighed, raising my hands and letting my weapons tumble to the sand at my feet. "True enough," I answered morosely, "but I'm not _quite_ out of tricks yet."

"There's no trick," Hikaru growled determinedly, "you're _trapped_."

"Well, there's _one_," I replied, triumphant smirk returning. "I call it... Sibling rivalry."

Hikaru's deep blue eyes had time to widen fractionally before a kunai soared over my head and took him in the throat. Hisoka hopped to the ground at my side as her brother crumpled, giving a strangled gurgle of protest as he fell. She held out a hand expectantly and, after a moment of fishing at my side, I dropped a small pouch into it.

"Sister... _why?_" Hikaru pleaded from the ground as his sister inspected my payment.

She looked up from the bag and pouted at him, "because you never let me take point _or_ give the victory speech." Hisoka went on as she plucked a glossy sphere from the bag and popped it in her mouth, "and candy, there was candy involved."

"Traitor," her brother muttered as he got to his feet.

I smiled contentedly as the brown haired siblings bickered, turning to survey our 'battlefield.' The field of boulders and soft sand acted as a playground, providing plenty of space to run and places to hide while a set of swings served as more traditional playground equipment off along one side. Currently the space was littered with the folded paper shuriken and kunai we used in our games and marked with lines in the sand where we'd laid 'traps.'

Say what you would, playing ninja was _fun_ if you could find a few kids who were willing to elaborate beyond the typical running at one another and shouting.

The Gankyou twins were one such pair, though calling them the 'Gankyou twins' wasn't particularly descriptive. The entire Gankyou clan was built on their odd propensity to produce twins and triplets, the siblings trained in a teamwork based taijutsu style and not-quite-bloodline jutsu that took advantage of their close bonds of blood and birth. As a result, they made for fearsome teams that filled out a fair sized proportion of the Suna corps.

The rare fraternal twins of the clan, like Hikaru and Hisoka, were actually treasured because, while their identical brethren tended to share chakra reserves, control, and affinities with each other, they tended to have their own, allowing for stronger team structure and giving them a leg up in joining the clan's ruling council. A clan founded on twins and teamwork couldn't rightfully have a single head, after all.

I'd made a few friends since my isolation had lifted partway on my fourth birthday and I were permitted to commingle with my peers, but I considered the twins my best by far. Hisoka had a serious, contemplative nature that allowed me to act a little grown up, and Hikaru was full of a boisterous enthusiasm that reminded me of how fun it was to be a kid. Between the two of them I managed to get enough socialization to avoid going off the deep end.

Naoko, our caretaker, was nice enough, but she was there on as a mission and there was always a distance because of it. And while Temari was still good company, a large part of our relationship had become a rivalry, and turning everything into a competition proved tiresome. And father... He'd drifted away again, and this time he didn't seem to want to come back.

As if summoned by my thought, I saw Naoko walking towards us, seeming almost a giant in the field of short boulders. As she neared I spotted Temari at her heels, bidding goodbye to her own group of friends. Realizing it was nearly time to go, I tapped the twins on their shoulders and indicated that we should start picking up our scattered toy weapons. I was just gathering the strays from my final salvo when the caretaker arrived.

"Ready to see your father, Kankuro?" She asked just a shade too brightly, and I grunted my ascent as I stowed the last of my paper arsenal in a pocket.

"Slay ya later, Hikaru," I said with a wave as I joined Temari in following Naoko away, "excellent work, Hisoka."

"I'm gonna get you next time!" Hikaru answered, "that trick won't work again!"

I just barely caught Hisoka's small smile as she stepped up behind her brother and shot her foot forward. Hooking it around his ankle, she yanked the leg out from under him.

"I disagree," she declared coolly as he spluttered in the sand.

"Your friends are _weird,_" Temari said, throwing the twins a glance as they fell to bickering again. She mostly hung around with a cousin to the Nenshoudo clan heir, the two of them having decided that, having joined the academy, they were too old to play ninja now that they were practically real ninjas themselves. Suna seemed to have dodged the remarkable luck that Konoha had when it came to clan heirs, most of them either a few years ahead or behind us in age. We were sociable, as potential heads of the small but powerful Sabidou clan the other heirs were our future political allies, but real friendship across those age gaps would have to wait a few years.

"Yep," I answered cheerfully, grinning widely in a way that I knew would annoy her. As we got older the age gap between us became less of an issue and aggravating her only got more fun. She still handed me my ass on a regular basis, but a few clever tricks allowed me to turn the tables now and again.

My good mood slipped as we approached the Kazekage Tower. It was Sunday, which meant a break from training, a trip to the market, and, to cap it all off, a progress report to our father. The weekly meetings were the only time we were guaranteed to see him any more, and even they were taken in his office as he buried himself in his work. Beyond that, our interactions were reserved to surprise observations of our lessons and standing at his side at formal occasions.

As we entered his office I wondered for the hundredth time who was actually at fault for our strained, formal relationship. He hadn't exactly been eager to spend time around us, but in the months before he'd sent Gaara away he'd at least made an attempt. After, I'd been angry and standoffish and Temari had spent weeks flinching at his presence. Perhaps he'd just decided to cut his losses.

"Temari," my father told the elder child as we stood at attention before his desk, "what have you accomplished this week?"

"I got the highest marks on the chakra theory exam," she said proudly as our father nodded. We received constant reminders in our studies that our family's bloodline techniques were something developed from deep study rather than the inborn talent other clans were gifted with. Whether or not we manifested the magnetic release our father and grandfather had mastered, we were expected to be brilliant in whatever specialty we entered.

"And I'm still doing the best at math, even if there wasn't an exam this week," she went on. Another non-surprise, father put great stock in accounting, "but I'm only doing second in procedure and tactics, and I'm only fifth in taijutsu." The last was said with embarrassment, but it was to be expected. Our family style was built to be used together with powerful jutsu, on it's own it would put her above the civilian students who were only just learning, but leave her towards the middle of the clan children at best.

"Your performance is adequate," our father intoned before shifting his gaze to me, "and yours, Kankuro?"

"Sensei says my chakra control is exceptional," I answered dutifully. I'd be entering the academy next year and the tutor had thought it a prudent to give me an introduction to accessing my chakra before then. He'd apparently expected it to take a week of careful instruction rather than the afternoon that I'd gotten it in. While it was a simple enough exercise, it had still been one I hadn't practiced before and it felt good to know that my efforts had been worth more than a parlor trick.

"But that my reserves are only average," I went on. _And probably would be below average if I hadn't gotten a head start_, I added mentally before continuing, "and my mathematics continues to be above the academy standards." The worst that the practical math got in this world was trigonometry, and while I'd gotten a little rusty since being forcibly removed from college by my death, it was still something I'd already learned and excelled at. Even if I _would_ have killed for a proper calculator.

"He rates my taijutsu and accuracy as adequate and my political knowledge as sufficient," I finished, wondering why there seemed to be such a difference between two words that should have meant exactly the same thing. I'd never been good at memorizing dates and names, and while that might be passed over in a standard shinobi, Temari and I were being groomed to lead. That my prodigal reputation didn't seem to include such skills was a disappointment.

I could practically see the same considerations taking place in my father's mind as he weighed the last slip against the first success.

"Well done," he finally proclaimed as two small bundles of currency appeared in his hands. He set one down before each of us and I noted that they were slightly larger than usual as we reached out to take them. Mine might even have been a couple bills larger than Temari's. It had been made very clear early on in these meetings that our pocket money relied entirely on our progress. That we were being evaluated against each other only served to sharpen our rivalry and motivate us. It may have been a cold system for a parent to take, but I couldn't say it wasn't fair.

I also couldn't say I was looking forwards to the next day's joint practice after Temari got out of the academy. From the determined gleam in her eye, she was aiming to tip the balance in her favor before next week's meeting.

Our father gave us a long, thoughtful look before finally nodding and stating "dismissed."

I was relieved he'd decided to keep the reports short this week. Sometimes he would launch into long lectures or spend time questioning us to draw out more detailed answers, or even demanding demonstrations of our professed advances.

Such meetings were always stressful, but most of all I was uncomfortable in his presence. While any hatred I might have harbored for him had burnt out years ago, I still couldn't help but think back to the day that Gaara had been taken away. There was a little anger and sadness in the thought, but most of all there was regret. I'd never been able to mount the courage to confront him on the issue again, not after the display he'd made. For all he knew, I'd forgotten I'd ever had a brother.

I may have been able to take pride in my skills and knowledge, but if I couldn't face my own father over the most important mission of my life, I was nothing more than a coward.

[||]8[||]

A week later Naoko led us back to the bustling market square that was our first stop every Sunday. While Temari could stop off and make a purchase on her way home from the academy most days, I was mostly restricted to the regular visits unless I actively pestered our caretaker to take me. Thus, despite our allowance being distributed on the same day that we went shopping, I usually had to wait a full week before actually purchasing something with it. There was probably a lesson about prudent spending and borrowing against the future somewhere in there.

I darted from stall to stall, thankful that we were allowed to roam as I examined what fresh wares merchants had brought into town throughout the week. As a vetted Chuunin, Naoko could reliably track us in a crowd at any distance we were liable to run to. And, as the Kage's children, there were ANBU watching us from the rooftops just in case, on top of the typical security that lingered just out of sight in any hidden village.

The first order of the day, as was usual for me, was tracking whatever new sweets the vendors might have acquired. What had begun as simple nostalgia for the sugar loaded flavors of the world I'd left behind had gradually evolved into a kind of candy connoisseurship as I compared the exotic new tastes to the ones I half remembered. I'd always been the kind of kid who carefully rationed out my winnings from Halloween over the rest of the year, and that disposition had only increased now that I had whole new assortment to go through. I sought out quality over quantity, striking out to find anything new before settling on any of the favorites I'd picked out.

It was as I was thanking a vendor and pocketing the small bag of candies that I noticed the shift in the crowd. The normally loud exchanges of haggling quieted even as the murmur of conversation picked up and the motion in the square changed as people shifted from going somewhere to avoiding something.

I knew what it meant even before I turned and saw the small red haired child being carried on the shoulders of a tall brown haired man. The crowd parted around them, giving the two of them a wide berth even as half of them stared. Their whispers carried the word '_demon_' more often than not, spoken in tones of awe and fear and, for a very few, hate. Unlike Konoha, Suna hadn't seen the wrath of a rampaging biiju since the Shodaime Kazekage sealed Shukaku at it's founding, but neither had it seen a Jinchuriki since the Sandaime had replicated the demon's powers and declared the process redundant, sealing Shukaku at it's container's death rather than transplanting it.

All they had to go on were stories two generations old and rumors carried from other villages, and as a result my brother was viewed not with hatred but with watchful, judgmental eyes. They were waiting for some slip that would solidify gossip into fact, and from what I'd heard there were already enough incidents to make them wary. They said that Yashamaru carried him because otherwise the sand would twitch and dance at his feet, and that getting too close or startling him would result in a granular whip flaying the offender.

I wanted to think better of my brother, to believe that he hadn't hurt anyone, but I knew what he could become. That my uncle still survived and cared for him meant that he hadn't surrendered to Shukaku's madness yet, but I didn't doubt that there had been accidents.

I resisted the urge to push through the crowd to meet them, knowing that Yashamaru would vanish into the crowd long before I reached them. Doubtless he was under orders to keep Gaara from interacting with his siblings, and knowing my uncle he was purposely skirting them by bringing Gaara along when he knew we'd be here. He was unfailingly loyal to Suna and my father, but shared his sister's mischievous nature and exploiting loopholes to let my sister and I see our brother, however distantly and briefly, seemed like something he'd do.

I almost wished he hadn't gone through the trouble. It was good to see my brother, to know that he hadn't lost himself, but to see him and not be able to _do_ anything, knowing what I did? His outbursts would only get worse as his chakra reserves grew, going from harsh scrapes against sand to lashes that would rend flesh from bone. I didn't know what I could possibly do, what I hoped to change, but to have the opportunity to try dangled before me only to be snatched away was maddening.

I sighed as I finally lost sight of them in the crowd and made my way to where Naoko stood with Temari. I'd figure out something eventually, but for now I would just have to try and push it from my mind.

[||]8[||]

Splitting off from Naoko as Temari did the same, I headed for the pair of familiar figures sitting on one of the field's low boulders. Noting that there weren't quite enough other kids running around for a larger game yet, I decided to make my own fun and pulled myself up to sit between them. Hikaru immediately eyed me suspiciously from my right, and I grinned back at him.

"Still think you can beat me?"

"Ha, now that I know that _someone_ can't be trusted," he shot back, glaring past me at his sister, "there's no way I'm gonna lose!"

"Didn't you say the same about trip lines around blind corners?" I inquired innocently.

"And standing behind pit traps?" Hisoka added in a lecturing tone that meant she was having fun at her brother's expense. I was fairly certain I only won our mock fights as often as I did because she loved teasing him over loses even more than I did.

"Or explosives tags on my hiding places?"

"Or that time he stuck his foot out and tripped you when he heard you coming?" She finished.

"Huh," I blinked and ran over the last minute in my head, "did _we_ just do the creepy twin thing?"

She studied me for a moment before looking down at her hands in mock horror, "I think I may be contagious. The Gankyou is spreading."

Any further contemplation of the growing twin pandemic was cut off as Hikaru erupted. "Well, this time I mean it!"

"Ah, relax," I said with a shrug before clapping them both over the shoulder, "you know I hate to use the same trick twice." There was a loud clack as I dropped a bag directly onto Hisoka's lap and took advantage of the time they both took to stare at it to squirm off the boulder and take a few steps away.

"Unless it works," I added as Hikaru lunged at his sister and dragged her to the ground. I wondered how long it would take him to realize the bag was full of rocks as the two rolled about in the sand, but my satisfaction fled as they rolled towards me and one of them very deliberately seized my ankle and knocked me down with them.

As was typical in any actual fight between the three of us, it ended a few minutes later with me on the ground and the two of them sitting on my back, the small sack of rocks balanced on my head. While I might have been able to dream up any number of schemes to overcome them both in a game of ninja, even one on one it was rare for me to pull off a victory with my admittedly weak taijutsu. I came out better in any target practice competitions we might have, but by and large the twins were a problem that I couldn't take head on. I needed misdirection and occasionally, as I'd gotten last week, a little help.

Something clicked into place as I reexamined that last thought and a grin slowly spread across my face.

"Hey," I managed to gasp out despite the pressure on my torso, "you two... Wanna play ninja... With a _real_ ninja?"

[||]8[||]

"He got away," Hikaru said apologetically as he and his sister found me again in the market square. The week before I'd managed to convince them to join me there so I could point out my uncle and have them tail him. The idea had been that he wouldn't dodge the attentions of a couple of kids that he _wasn't_ under orders to avoid, but apparently that hadn't held true. It made sense now that I thought of it, shinobi were trained to watch for tails and even children could act as informants. _Anyone_ discovering the one-tail's jinchuriki's location was potentially disastrous.

"What happened?" I asked as I tried to reconsider my options.

"We followed him for two intersections before he noticed us," Hisoka answered, "then he took to the rooftops and we couldn't follow him any farther."

"Right..." I said, a plan beginning to form, "we're gonna need some more help."

[||]8[||]

A week later I broke off from the market square as soon as I spotted Hikaru and Hisoka and the two of them led me off along one of the side streets. After the previous week's failure we'd managed to gather a dozen or so friends and acquaintances, most of them civilian kids, and put together a plan.

Instead of following directly, the twins would act as coordinators, placing the kids near intersections and having them run off when Yashamaru approached. Knowing where he was, they redistributed the rest of the children to new intersections, the relentless energy of youth just barely managing to outpace my uncle's steady pace. It had gotten steadily easier as they'd started to guess the direction he was headed, managing to position their lookouts a few places ahead and avoid unnecessary running.

Finally, they'd managed to spot my uncle entering his home and returned to inform me of the mission's success, the rest of the group swarming the candy vendor with the wad of cash I'd shoved into their hands. This would definitely be worth losing a week of candy and a chunk of my savings.

ANBU were doubtless following us as we made our way across the village, and would probably report my actions to my father, just as they'd probably reported last week's operation. I took the lack of comment on his part to be tacit permission to go forward with another plan, or perhaps disbelief that I'd actually be able to accomplish my goal. Either way, he'd have no right to complain once I actually _did_.

At least, that was what I kept telling myself as we at last reached the site.

The house itself was a small one story affair and appeared inconspicuous, though not so inconspicuous as to attract attention as obviously belonging to a ninja. It said a lot about this world that I was starting to find things suspicious for being too _normal_. The largest things setting it apart from it's neighbors were the eight foot wall enclosing the property and what looked to be the top of a swing set peeking over the top. The whole setup seemed familiar for reasons that I couldn't quite place.

"So, now what?" Hikaru asked after I'd spent a moment silently surveying the site. He was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other, clearly not having expected me to actually _do_ anything once we got this far.

"Now," I answered, scanning the wall for access points, "I do something _really_ stupid." The gates probably weren't an option, they'd be locked and I didn't doubt that Yashamaru would just ignore me rather than deal with me directly. The walls were well maintained, except... I rounded the lot to get a better angle and saw that a portion of the wall not facing the main street was cracked, the plaster worn off and the loose mortar between the bricks looking to offer excellent hand holds.

"This seems... Unwise," Hisoka stated nervously as I advanced into the alley to examine the wall more closely.

"Didn't I just say that?" I asked, and then sighed when I turned to see them eying the way back to the market. "Look, don't worry, this is my uncle. Nothing _bad_ is going to happen." That seemed to ease their concerns a bit, though they still seemed jittery.

Nodding, I turned and stepped up to the wall, wriggling my fingers into the larger gaps and testing them. The bricks seemed surprisingly sturdy for the condition the wall was in, so it came down to my ability to actually scale it. Frowning slightly in concentration, I channeled chakra into my palms and felt my grip strengthen as they adhered to the stone. I didn't have the reserves to actually wall walk, and the control in my feet was a little too shaky besides, but even the small flow I managed to my hands took weight off my fingers and made climbing orders of magnitude easier.

A minute of hauling myself up brought me to the top and I was glad to see that the other side was just as cracked and climbable. "I'll call when I'm down," I told my two friends as I repeated the process in reverse down the other side. Once I felt I was low enough I released my grip and fell the last three feet to the ground, landing in a crouch.

Before I could make good on my word, I felt something snap around my ankle and yelped as I was yanked upwards, loops of wire pulling tight around my legs until I was dangling six feet up with my back pressed to the wall. In retrospect, of course the obvious security hole would be a trap.

As I tried to get my bearings, I heard a familiar scamper fading quickly out of my range of hearing. "Hikaru's running away, isn't he?" I asked.

"Yes," Hisoka said, and a moment later added, "I was never here," before her own footsteps sounded off.

"...ANBU?" I said helplessly after a moment. A long minute of silence was the only answer.

"This is an object lesson, isn't it?" I asked the empty yard. "Spectacular."

* * *

A/N: I hope that anyone who dislikes OCs had the sense not to read a story set in Suna.

The Gankyou are part idea I had for a clan, and part commentary why most of the Suna ninja corps seem to be completely identical. Heaps of glory and honor to AgainstTheCurrent for the loads of help with naming everyone.

Continued thanks to Colors of Iris for spotting some grammatical errors, which I will gladly take from anyone. Go read her story Little Acorn if you enjoy well written SIs and don't hate OCs.

This story passed a hundred followers just as I was proofreading, and I can only express my deepest gratitude for all this attention. Please review!


	5. The Runaround

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my raft. The sun is harsh, but the fish plentiful and the waves soothing. I am content.

* * *

**Chapter 5: The Runaround**

I grunted as I tried to lever myself up, bending at the waist and straining with my arms in an attempt to reach the wire that had been digging into my calves for the better part of an hour. My fingers just barely brushed the loop nearest my knee and with a final burst of effort I contorted myself far enough to hook the very tips of my digits over the line. I gasped in relief as I relaxed my abdominals for an instant before returning to work.

The wire dug even harder into my hands than it did my legs as I placed more weight on them, but hours of weekly practice in throwing weapons and taijutsu had built up calluses that spared me the worst of it and afforded me a better grip. Another heave and I'd managed to move my hold up to my second knuckle, giving me a strong enough anchor to start on the next part. Straining with my stomach muscles and left arm, I released my grip with my right and reached for the next loop of wire.

Just as I managed to touch my fingertips to their target the pressure grew too great on my left hand and it's hold slipped. With a cry of a alarm I fell back, barely preventing my head from slamming into the wall by flexing my abdominals and bracing with my elbows. I winced as I felt the brickwork scrape a layer of skin away and very gently lowered myself to hang against the wall.

Cursing my four year old body, though my other, nearly two decades older, probably wouldn't have fared much better, I lifted my hands to my face and examined them. The pads of my fingers were crisscrossed with angry indents where I'd dug them into wire over my last few attempts, and with a shock I noticed a splash of brighter crimson dribbling from the tip of my left pointer where the wire had actually cut into me.

_Come on_, I told myself as I felt my eyes start to water and the beginning of a sniffle, _I've had paper cuts worse than this._ I don't know whether it was being four again or just everything that had been piled on over the course of the last hour, but I couldn't keep from tearing up. The sun was typically unrelenting, the wire was tight enough that my feet were numb and what blood they lacked had gone straight to my head, and my hands were sore and elbows scraped raw. Add in that my mission had emphatically _failed_ and I suppose that a small gash stinging me was the last straw.

For a few long minutes I just hung limp in my bindings, glaring at the yard through tear blurred eyes and occasionally being wracked by a sob. I didn't know whether Yashamaru had known about my plan and caught me deliberately, or if the trap had been laid to provide general defense, but it didn't matter at that point. Even with the experience and guile of an adult mind, there was only so much a four year old could manage, and this plan had been at the limit.

What did I even hope to accomplish with this scheme? Even if I somehow got down from the wall and into the house, even if the whole property turned out not to be a decoy, did I expect it to _matter?_ Did I expect Yashamaru, the man who in another time would die trying to break and kill Gaara out of loyalty to Suna, to look the other way and let me sneak in once a week against direct orders? Did I think that I could miraculously overcome the demon that was literally devouring my brother's soul from the inside and whispering murder in his mind?

How could I hope to overcome any of it, let alone the trials awaiting my family in the years to come? My father, Orochimaru, the Akatsuki... It was more than I could handle. More that _anyone_ could handle.

...

Except, that wasn't quite right, was it? I'd already seen all of it play out from another angle, and someone had always risen to the challenge, no matter how hopeless, no matter how dire. It had never been easy, and there had always been a price to be paid, but they'd always prevailed in the end.

And if a screaming moron in an orange jumpsuit could take all of that, who the hell was I to fold in the face of a little family drama?

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths to steady myself. If there was a world in existence where sheer bullheaded stubbornness could win out over impossible odds, this was it.

I was just pulling myself together to make another attempt when I heard the barest whisper of footsteps across packed earth of the yard, quickening as they neared me. I opened my eyes to the sight of Yashamaru pulling to a stop just in front of me, panicked concern written across his face. Whatever this trap had been meant to accomplish, I doubted it had involved him discovering his nephew tear streaked and bloody.

"Kankuro," he sighed as he looped an arm around my waist to take the tension off my legs and readied a kunai to cut me free with his other hand. "What do you think you're doing here?"

If anyone else had asked that question I would have either lied or launched into a plea about my brother, but this was _Yashamaru._ Yashamaru, my goofy showoff of an uncle who was living proof that my genepool either wasn't completely insane, or had enough kinds of crazy thrown in that it could balance out. Yashamaru, who was perhaps my only ally in wanting to see Gaara grow up to be more than a weapon.

"Y-you know," I stammered out, still not quite over my breakdown, "j-just hangin' around."

He smirked at that and paused in freeing, hand going to his chin as he made an exaggeratedly thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. "Hmmm, in that case, maybe I should leave you be. I can see you're all tied up."

"Come on, uncle Yasha," I answered, voice steadying as I used it, "you wouldn't leave me swinging in the wind."

"Well, alright," he replied as he swept his blade through the wire, flipping me over before sitting me down at the wall's base and setting to work freeing my legs. "I'll cut you a break, just this once."

"Can always count on family to get you out of a bind," I finished, the both of us lapsing into a comfortable silence as I scrubbed my face with one hand while my uncle swept medical chakra over the other to close up my cut. I'd managed to get snot to dribble _up_ my nose while upside down, where it'd gotten caught up in my eyebrows. New experiences every day.

The smirk faded from Yashamaru's face as he pulled my arm straight and started on the elbow. "You know your father is going to hear about this."

"Please," I said, looking away stubbornly, "he's _Kage_. He knew about this plan before _I_ did."

"And what a plan," he chuckled, "it might have worked if ANBU hadn't heard every word of it." He released my left arm and moved to the right. I gave the repaired limb a flex, marveling at how quickly he'd erased the damage with barely a tingle of invasive chakra alerting me to his efforts. There wasn't even the minor tightness that would have accompanied a wound healed naturally.

"Will..." I said softly after a moment, "will you let me see him?" My uncle sighed and released my arm, green chakra fading from around his hand as he settled against the wall beside me.

"Kankuro..." He finally answered, "why are you so dead set on this?"

I clenched my fists and stared at my feet as I ground out an answer. "You _know_ why."

I got the feeling that he was scrutinizing me for a long moment before I worked up the courage to turn and meet his gaze. Yashamaru lacked my father's terrifying presence, but we'd never spoken of the day we'd lost my mother and doing so was nearly as intimidating. Still, I had to do it, it was that or give up.

Seeing the determination in my eyes, he turned his gaze skyward and rested his head against the wall. "I'd hoped you'd forgotten about that."

My fingers dug deeper into my palms as I shot to my feet. "_Why would you say that!?_" I couldn't recall being more livid in the entirety of my new life. I had expected a lot of things from this conversation, everything from discouragement to professional detachment to an outburst of rage, but suggesting that I would _forget_? That somehow it would be better if I never remembered my mother's dying wish, ignored my baby brother?

"Because you're _four_," he answered coldly, the intensity of the stare he turned upon me a rare reminder that my uncle was once a fully vetted member of ANBU. "You shouldn't be burdened with... this." He made a small sweeping gesture that somehow managed to convey the vast unfairness of the world.

"I'm older than Gaara," I said, still glaring but my rage fading. Yashamaru may have been following orders, but he was doing his best to do right by his family at the same time. If nothing else, I could respect that. "And he's got it worse."

"You know?" He asked, arching an eyebrow, "of course you know. Always have been too clever for your own good."

"I listen," I answered with a shrug. The villagers were already loose with knowledge about Suna's jinchuriki, and they never noticed the little kids running around in the market square. Privately, I wavered between horror at how widespread supposedly top secret knowledge was and being thoroughly impressed that ANBU either managed to stop any of it leaving or stop any of the assassins getting in.

"To everything but 'no'," he chided.

"Father never actually told me not to go looking for Gaara," I shrugged, "and I figured that he either approved or didn't care when I didn't get told off for the first plan."

"Your father..." Yashamaru began, pausing for a moment to gather his thoughts, "he likes to test things. See what they do, how far they'll go, how strong they'll be..."

"When they'll break," I muttered.

"Everything he does," my uncle answered with a disapproving frown, "he does to protect us. You, me, the entire village. All of Wind Country, even." His eyes were full of a fierce conviction that I'd never seen before. He truly believed every word, I realized with a measure of astonishment and anger.

"And mom?" I shot back, "and Gaara? What did he do to protect _them?_"

There was real rage written across his face for an instant, there and gone again so quickly that I wouldn't be certain it had been there if it weren't the lingering tingle of the killing intent that had accompanied it. After, there was only a distant sadness to him that reminded me far too much of the weariness my father was so often wrapped in.

"He didn't expect to lose Karura, none of us did. She was always so strong... If he'd known the price..." He shook his head as if to clear away the memories.

"We can't live in what ifs or regrets," he went on, eying me with a thoughtful remorse. "And we can't second guess our leaders. We have to trust them. To defend us, to guide us, to make the decisions no one else can, just as they trust us to stand at their backs and follow through on our responsibilities. Without that trust..." He plucked a small stone from the ground and closed his hand around it. When he opened it the stone, whether by brute strength or sleight of hand, had been replaced by loose sand. "We would only be so many grains of sand, waiting to be carried away by the desert wind," he finished, punctuating the statement with a burst of chakra that scattered the rough grains from his palm.

I chewed my lip in response, at once awed and bewildered by his devotion. I'd never trusted anyone that deeply in either of my lives. I hadn't been paranoid, exactly, but I'd always prodded at motives and picked apart orders. The idea of placing my fate so totally in the hands of another was a completely alien concept, one that appalled the morals instilled in me in my first life.

Not knowing what else to do, I lowered my gaze and studied the ground at my feet. We sat like that for a long while, the silence neither comfortable nor awkward, just something that _was,_ each of us off in our world.

Eventually Yashamaru stood, looking off towards the front of the property. "Looks like Naoko is here. Time for you to head off." I looked up questioningly for a moment, not having detected anything of the sort, before shrugging and getting to my feet. Presumably it was one of the myriad ninja tricks I hadn't picked up yet.

I trailed after him as we circled the house, smiling softly as we passed the swing set. The seat was reasonably sand free and there was a groove worn into the ground beneath it. I might not be able to get to him at the moment, but Gaara wasn't alone, not completely. I could trust Yashamaru with him for a little while yet.

When we finally got around to the front I saw that the familiar figures of Naoko and Temari at the gates. My sister looked mildly irate, while our caretaker had a maddeningly placid expression plastered across her face, as she always did when one of us got into trouble. It was a little disconcerting, the way she never seemed to get so much as annoyed.

"It was good seeing you again, kid," my uncle said, stooping slightly to ruffle my hair, "remember what we talked about."

"I will, uncle Yasha," I answered, "see you next time."

"Kankuro..." He answered, raising a hand to massage his temple, "there really _can't_ be a next time."

"Keep telling yourself that," I replied cheerfully. I'd come this far, and had no intention of stopping. My uncle stared at me for a long moment before his face broke into amusement, smiling fondly as he gave my head another ruffle.

"Alright, I'll see you then." We broke away from each other then, Yashamaru heading towards the house as I continued on to Temari and Naoko.

"Did you have a good time, Kankuro?" Our caretaker asked pleasantly as I approached. Kami only knew what punishment she would mete out later for this escapade, the woman was completely unreadable.

Still, as I cast once last gaze over my shoulder I caught sight a shock of crimson hair on a tiny body, one black-ringed eye peeking around the door frame as my uncle entered.

"Yeah," I said, smiling even as the door closed, "I think I did."

"That's nice. I'm sure your father will want to hear all about it."

Well. That killed my good mood in record time.

[||]8[||]

"This week I-" Temari began as we stood in father's office, only to be cut off as he raised his hand.

"Your teachers have kept me informed of your progress," he intoned, sliding a stack of bills in her direction, "it is adequate. You and Naoko may leave now." He turned his gaze to rest on me, "your brother and I must have words."

My sister hesitated for a moment, mouth twisting into a sour expression before she took the money and bowed deeply. Naoko echoed the bow and the both of them left the room, leaving my father and I to watch each other in uncertain silence for a long moment. I held my gaze to his as best I could. I would likely only have one chance to make an impression on this subject.

"Explain," my father finally commanded.

"This week," I began, seeking a familiar rhythm to ease my anxiety, "I practiced intelligence gathering, tracking, and infiltration against a Suna shinobi. Initial intelligence was sparse but gathered easily enough from resident civilians and identified the target as a former ANBU medic-nin of high repute stationed on a long term internal mission. The first tracking attempt failed due to the target's superior maneuverability once he realized he was pursued. The second succeeded through a network of third party informants assembled and distributed personally. Infiltration failed due to superior counter-intelligence on the target's part."

"And?" My father asked pointedly, apparently playing along for the moment.

"And," I went on, cheeks reddening slightly, "lack of foresight on my part concerning the target's defenses."

"Nevertheless," he answered, "an impressive first attempt, particularly as you've yet to receive tutelage in reconnaissance tactics."

"The _Great Hunter Masanori_ series goes into some detail on the subject," I answered with a shrug, referring to a light novel series I'd picked up. It chronicled the titular hunter-nin's adventures as he sought out and captured or killed missing-nin.

"I see," he nodded approvingly. In addition to the series being tacitly endorsed as a deterrent against defection, we were encouraged to extract extracurricular training wherever we could. "And how did you select your target?"

"I... Was interested in his long term mission," I said nervously. We were approaching the heart of the matter.

"Oh? What about it?" It was disconcerting how amiably he was leading the conversation.

"It... He has..." I began, and found myself stumbling. My first instinct was to fall back on the promise I'd made, the mission I'd taken on. He was the Kazekage, the leader of Suna, the strongest proponent of putting the mission above all else. Such devotion to a goal _should_ have appealed to him, even if he decided to to supersede it with his own orders.

But that hadn't worked last time and, more than that, I found that Yashamaru's words were still echoing in my head. As Kazekage he stood as protector over Suna, even if he did it through his own brand of grim accounting, measuring the worth of a life against the gains to be made from it. Single minded completion of a mission was just another tool in his arsenal. If a mission didn't serve the village, didn't help him protect it, there was no point in him backing it.

And, more than that, his opinion of my mission. If I treated Gaara as a mission, he was an obligation, a burden.

My brother was _not_ a burden.

"Because my brother's there, and he needs me." And there we were, at the point we'd been dancing around for over two years.

"Your brother is protected and provided for," my father said sternly, "what need does he have for you?"

"I told you I gathered intel," I answered, "I know about the attacks. I know that he's feared because of them, that he's alone except for uncle Yashamaru because the villagers want nothing to do with him."

"And you think he won't attack you?" He probed, "you think you can help him more than my training, than Yashamaru's company?" He searched my eyes, which were still locked defiantly with his own, "you think can hold him at bay where we have failed?"

"I..." I cast my eyes down, for a moment feeling the full weight of the future bearing down on me, "I don't know. But..." I clenched my fists, gathering my determination, and returned my gaze to lock with his, "but I deserve to _try_."

He paused, and considered me for a long moment. "And if I forbid you?"

"Then I'll try anyway," I replied stonily, "he's too valuable to leave the village and too high profile to be kept secret. I found him once, and I can do it again."

"You would defy me?" He released a river of killing intent at that, more than I had felt in years, but it was the barest trickle next to the ocean it had been last time. Or perhaps I was just more prepared to face it now. Whatever the case, this time I didn't freeze up under the terrifying weight of his power, no matter how much I would have liked to.

"In this? Yes," I answered, struggling to convey my sincerity in the face of his strength, "always. As many times as it takes."

His intent held steady as he glared down at me, and I realized that I was trembling, limbs quaking even as I struggled to hold his gaze. After what seemed like an eternity the pressure vanished, my father turning his gaze to his desk as if I no longer mattered.

"You may go now," he stated, the dismissal clearly a command. I turned and stalked away without bowing, not caring about the blatant disrespect it showed.

[||]8[||]

I was surprised when, over the course of the next week, there didn't seem to be any consequences for my disobedience and belligerence beyond the withholding of pocket money. Tutoring sessions continued as usual and neither my meals nor free time were restricted any more than they'd been before. My father must have either thought I'd been cowed despite my bravado, or that I wouldn't succeed regardless. Or, as my uncle had pointed out, he was pushing to see just how far I'd go...

No matter what he had in mind, I was determined to prove him wrong. Now that I had obvious obstacles to overcome instead of a host of vague threats in the future I could focus my studies more thoroughly to get around them.

The first step was requesting trapping lessons from my tutor, who acquiesced surprisingly easily. We'd covered the topic briefly in the past, but I'd need more than the overview I'd gotten if I wanted to outmaneuver ANBU level traps. Even if I learned nothing else and focused entirely on them, my only saving graces would be that I knew they were there and that my uncle would refrain from using anything _too_ devastating against me.

I also tapped the family library, taking out scrolls on escape techniques. Most of them were far out of my league, requiring either actual jutsu or specialized equipment, but there were a couple that relied more on chakra control than anything else that I thought I'd be able to pull off. The ones that relied on manipulating the trap itself, extending my chakra into it to untie knots or break clasps, were the most effective but again beyond my abilities. One technique, however, seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.

It was a reversal of the wall walking technique, where instead of projecting chakra outward to cling to cracks and flaws in a surface, it was spread in a thin layer over the user's person to smooth flesh and clothing into a frictionless surface that could slip the bonds. It wasn't something I could master quickly, but it took less chakra than any of my other options and I thought my control was good enough to make it work, as it was supposedly easier than wall walking.

Finally, I decided that I'd need the best intel I could get for not just this task, but for everything I knew waited for me down the line. It was approaching five years since I'd left my old world behind and, while I'd always prided myself on my memory, I couldn't hold everything indefinitely. Things were already fading, and I had no idea how much had already been forgotten so thoroughly that I didn't know it was missing. I couldn't afford to let that trend continue.

I also couldn't afford to let anyone realize what I was recording. There wasn't a single scenario I could envisage where the revelation of my origin would end well. My first instinct was to just write in English, as my political lessons had spanned the whole of the known world and the language seemed to be entirely absent, but the use of a seemingly original alphabet would be suspicious begin with. And if they managed to compare it to anything else I wrote and decipher some kind of Rosetta Stone...

Likewise, any cipher I could compose using kanji wouldn't hold up against anyone who knew what they were doing.

Fortunately, being the son of a history buff had exposed me to a few novel cryptographic methods, and a personal favorite were the Navajo code talkers. Obviously I couldn't speak Navajo, but the same principle could be applied to any pair of languages language. Writing in Japanese, I took the first letter of the English translation of each word and strung them together into the decoded message.

It was a ridiculously simple substitution cipher... If you happened to know English and know that it was a cipher in the first place. The only place the former appeared to exist was in my head, and if anybody got in _there_ the cipher was the least of my troubles. And with the entirety of the language to play around with it was even possible to disguise the latter by building the code's top layer out of grammatically accurate sentences that occasionally even made sense. Without either one of them it was theoretically impossible to decipher no matter how much analysis you threw at it.

It was a system I was confident enough to scrawl in a notebook disguised as a series of dreadful haiku, one of the select few art forms that it was permissible to both practice and be utterly hopeless at in our household.

It was also a stark reminder of everything I'd left behind. When I'd first been reborn I'd disbelieved the world's reality so thoroughly that I hadn't considered that I'd left anything at all. Everything was a temporary dream and I'd be home soon enough with only severe physical trauma to show for it, so why worry over it? Over time I'd adjusted to the idea that this was all somehow real so slowly that the implications had never really hit me.

Until now, and I remembered my dad enthusiastically describing the clever tricks the Allies had used to stay one step ahead in World War II. It was as if floodgates had opened and everything I'd avoided thinking about for four years came tumbling out. My energetic and slightly overbearing mom, the sister I'd gotten along with but never really known, the younger cousins who wavered between indifference and adoration, the friends who were entirely to blame for my playful antagonism...

It occurred to me that I'd probably never see any of them again.

Tears threatened to well up, but I stifled them, shoving the memories away with them. Everyone I'd known before, the entire world I'd come from... They deserved to be remembered. But one existential crisis at a time. I had to focus on the present before I could deal with the past.

I spent a long hour meditating to clear my mind before setting ink to paper again. There was work yet to do.

[||]8[||]

The next week I strode into the market square, confident that I could at least avoid the trap that had caught me the last time. It was unlikely that it was the only defense, but I wouldn't know what else was there unless I tried, and I wasn't making any statements about my conviction by sitting around plotting. And proving my conviction was definitely important.

Everything father did was colored by his tendency to assign worth to everything he saw or did. Learning our lessons well was worth _this_ much, disobedience cost _that_, the whole world could be boiled down to a cost/benefit analysis in his eyes. So I'd just have to prove that getting at Gaara was worth more to me than the trouble of keeping us apart would cost him. That meant I had to keep the infiltration attempts coming, no matter that they had no chance of success.

It was a departure from my typical method of careful planning and setup, but it wasn't as though I'd be going up against anything genuinely dangerous. No matter how much of a nuisance I became, I was still the Kazekage's four year old son.

Disfiguring punishments wouldn't be socially acceptable until I became a Genin.

With all that in mind, the instant I saw Gaara perched on Yashamaru's shoulders I broke away from the crowd, deciding it might be easier if I got there before they did. I just barely caught the mischievous gleam in my uncle's eyes as I left the square and set off for the house they'd been in last time. With any luck my father hadn't actually had them moved, I didn't have the funds to buy off enough civilian kids to work my gambit again.

That worry was assuaged a moment later when I saw the two of them land in front of me, my uncle already running as he hit the ground. For a moment I wondered how he'd come out of nowhere like that, but brushed it off as I gave chase. He must have jumped over me, or pulled some kind of ninja trick, or something. It didn't require consideration.

I didn't even question how was I keeping up with a running adult, let alone a Jounin. Obviously Yashamaru was holding back to make a game of it.

It really shouldn't have come as a surprise when, some time later, I heard something cry out and glanced down a street to my right to catch the familiar sight of the market square. All at once I was hit with a wave of fatigue and could feel a fuzziness I hadn't realized was there lifting from my thoughts. A quick look around ascertained that my uncle was nowhere in sight and consulting the shadows told me that over an hour had passed.

Genjutsu. Of course Yashamaru wouldn't be content to pull the same trick twice in a row.

I staggered over to the shadow cast by a nearby building and slumped against it's side, panting and soaked in sweat. The jutsu must have been designed to keep the victim running in circles right up to the point of exhaustion before cutting out. Or, I considered as I caught a glimpse of a turbaned ANBU on a nearby rooftop, one of my handlers had disrupted it before I ran myself to death. He probably could have done it at any point, but then I wouldn't have learned a lesson.

I spent awhile catching my breath and wiping sweat away from my face with the back of my arm before Naoko and Temari walked around the corner to loom over me.

"Did you have fun, Kankuro?" The caretaker asked in the superficially pleasant tone I was coming to despise.

"You... Betcha..." I wheezed. I definitely had to find out how to disrupt genjutsu, this was absolutely miserable.

"Excellent!" she proclaimed before turning to my sister, "run along to the playground, your brother has to go see your father."

"You're in _trouble_," Temari mocked as I heaved myself to my feet. I managed two steps before I stumbled and fell to my knees as she cackled, "did you forget how to _walk_?"

"I'll be... Walking... On your _face_... By the end... Of the week..." I panted. That was going to be a painful promise to fulfill, but backing down simply wasn't an option when dealing with an older sibling.

She just continued laughing as she continued down the street towards the playground and Naoko knelt to hoist me onto her back. I was somewhere between mortified and relieved that she was carrying me. Despite the embarrassment, I would be expected to _stand_ before my father. I needed to save my legs.

[||]8[||]

The weeks stretched into months as I settled into a rhythm. I would consult my tutor and spend time figuring out how to overcome the latest creative obstacle that got dropped in my way. They ran the gamut from infuriating to exhausting to painful to, in one case, vomit inducing.

Getting shunshinned a few blocks away every time I got near the house? Far too dizzying for a four year old constitution.

Then I would try again and come up against the latest problem. Fortunately, they started repeating after a few weeks, albeit they usually came at me from a new angle. As it turned out, there weren't all that many ninja techniques suitable for deterring small children.

Finally, I would end up standing before my father, retreading our first conversation as he tried to dissuade me and I refused to back down. He would never actually forbid anything, but it wasn't long before Naoko was carrying out punishments at his command. At first my movements became restricted as I was ordered to stay in my room outside of tutoring except when escorted. It wasn't particularly bothersome at first, as I could still have scrolls and books brought to me from the family library, but it was a constant reminder that I was being watched.

After that, I returned to my room one day to discover that my shelf of personal reading had been confiscated. I was relieved to discover that all my study materials, including the notebook of ciphered haiku, hadn't gone with them, but on top of the grounding I was beginning to feel the punishment. I couldn't study or train _all_ the time, that would be inhuman, and those books had helped me unwind. I replaced them partially by starting a second coded notebook, this one for things from my past life. People, places, stories, even ideas, anything that occurred to me as I took breaks between actively studying went in. It was cathartic to look back over everything from a remove, and who knew? Some of it might actually be useful one day. The code I used had come from the old world, after all.

Even my meals were getting cut back. By this point I was down to rice and tofu.

The only thing that he never touched was the Sunday trip to the market.

At first the exception confused me. Surely, if he intended to stop me seeing Gaara, removing those trips was the best way to do it. It took me awhile to realize that he was going for the root of the problem, not the symptom. He was trying to cure me of my disobedience by punishing the act rather than merely prevent me from performing it. He wouldn't let up until I gave in and stopped trying, submitted to him of my own free will.

Well, _that_ obviously wasn't going to happen.

[||]8[||]

It was scant weeks away from my fifth birthday as I made my latest attempt to breach my uncle's security. I was on high alert because I'd actually made it to within sight of the building, which usually meant he was trying something clever. These past weeks had taught me that there were few things in this world more worrisome than Yashamaru trying to be clever.

With that in mind, I crept towards the wall, taking a circuitous path that would take me around any traps set to take someone going in directly. Nevertheless, I constantly scanned the ground ahead for the telltale gleam of a tripwire or the subtly disturbed sand marking a buried pressure plate. Unfortunately, I still couldn't manage wall climbing without decent handholds and there was no way I was getting my hands on another grappling hook after I ruined my sheets and a lamp making the first one, so I _had_ to use the cracked section of wall.

Channeling chakra to my hands to help with my grip, I scaled it slowly, testing each hold for loose bricks before putting weight on it. I stopped just below the top, gritting my teeth as I hauled myself up to examine the top of the wall before actually placing my hands on it. Last time I'd gotten this far there had been mouse traps spread over the surface.

Once I'd gotten myself on top I got on my hands and knees and crawled a few meters to the left, wanting to avoid anything hidden directly opposite the way up. There weren't cracks to make for an easy climb down on this part of the wall, but I could manage without on the descent.

I lowered myself down on the inner side of the wall until I was clinging to the top by my fingertips and chakra, and then I ramped up the energy in my hands and let go. I couldn't manage enough to support my own weight, but I didn't have to if I was going down, I just needed enough to slow the drop and slide down the plaster at an almost leisurely pace.

When I'd touched down softly on the sand I was pleasantly surprised to find that I _wasn't_ strung up by my ankles, and turned to look at the yard itself for the first time. I froze when I saw the small red headed figure sitting on the swing, facing away from me.

There was no way it was that easy. This seemed too good to be true.

So it probably was.

I clasped my hands in a seal and flared my chakra as my tutor had shown me. "Kai!"

The image didn't fade or change as I tried to disrupt what I'd assumed to be genjutsu. Instead, I watched as my brother stumbled off of the swing and whipped around to look at the source of the sudden shout. To look at _me_.

Everything seemed to slow down as I noted the sand at his feet writhe and twist, lifting into a tendril that darted at me with all the speed and fury of a cobra striking.

Looking into Gaara's eyes, I saw no rage or hate. There was only surprise and fear and, just beginning, the panic of someone who's realized they've just made an enormous mistake.

I imagine that my expression was much the same as I raised an arm in a feeble defense, and then my world became pain.

* * *

A/N: One of these days I'm gonna end a chapter on a high note.

This chapter took forever to get done, that first conversation with Yashamaru just didn't want to get written, and that was after the first rewrite. There was another one after, but thankfully it mostly left that part alone. Still not entirely sure this is the best I can manage, but at this point it's better to get it out and move onto the next bit.

Continued thanks to everyone who's lent a hand keeping this fic up to code, you're all amazing.

Also amazing are the reviewers. It's always good to hear I'm doing something right, and it's important to know if I've done something wrong.


	6. Fear and Loathing in Suna

Being a ninja is hard enough when you work for the good guys, let alone when you get reincarnated into a family of psychopaths.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a log and the ire of the heavens. The storm rages and my grip weakens, I fear the sea shall soon claim me.

* * *

**Chapter 6: Fear and Loathing in Suna**

The sand seized my arm and _squeezed_, the inner surface a maelstrom of whirling grains even if the outside looked calm, grinding at flesh with agonizing slowness. I thought I could see the sand turning subtly red as it tore at my skin and drank my blood, but I was distracted by the piercing shriek that filled the yard. It was so loud I could barely focus on my pain, and I distantly wondered what anyone else had to panic about that could compete with my situation.

After a moment I realized it was _me_ screaming. Well, that would explain it.

A moment later I realized it wasn't _just_ me, and I shifted my blurring vision away from my arm and across the yard to Gaara. He was on his knees, hands clamped around his head as he stared at the ground beneath him. The surface was dancing as if alive, more tendrils rising and dissolving in some alien rhythm all around him. At first I feared that they too would lash out at me, but instead I watched in horror as they curled around my brother, almost seeming to caress him as they inched higher around his small form.

I nearly forgot the burning agony that had enveloped my arm as I watched the sand close around his head and seem to solidify, the shifting slowing as it settled into a more permanent shape. Searing red eyes the size of my head opened on it as it continued to grow, rising higher as more and more sand piled on. Soon a gash tore open across the front, loose trails of sand snapping into fangs in an instant as a monstrous maw gaped at me. I realized with mounting terror that the tendril attached to my arm emerged directly from the enormous mouth before me.

It started tugging at me, hauling me towards that horrific visage inch by inch despite my intensifying struggles. Soon I was mere feet away from the demon, which had grown to fill the yard and acquired a body of matching proportions. I gazed one last time into those baleful eyes, and the monster that had consumed my brother lunged forward, jaws snapping shut around me.

I screamed as walls of sand pressed around me and the blazing agony in my arm spread to cover every square inch of my skin. I screamed for what seemed like hours but could only have been instants before the sand was rushing to fill my mouth, digging and tearing until it was burrowing through my chest from the inside and my world had become nothing but pain pain _pain_-

I gasped as I came to, drenched in cold sweat, eyes darting around my dark room in a blind panic before managing to calm myself.

_It was only a dream_, I reminded myself as I levered myself into sitting up. _Well, mostly a dream,_ I added as pain shot through my right arm.

I raised the limb gingerly to examine it, checking the tightly wrapped bandages for signs of blood. It had been three days since I'd faced Gaara, and the wounds still bled if I put stress on the still knitting injuries. Thankfully, they didn't seem to have broken open again.

I gave a deep sigh as the pain dulled to a low ache and I lay back down. All that effort to get in, now with this injury piled on top.

Oh, and the nightmares, couldn't forget the nightmares, in a very literal sense. They were there every time I closed my eyes, my brother superimposed with that _thing_ I knew he might become if I didn't achieve my goals.

All of that, and I had nothing to show for it. I'd blacked out from the pain moments after the sand touched me, my last sight of my brother running away. If anything, I'd probably made things worse. I hadn't left my room since coming to, not even for training or meals or seeing my father, but I could imagine the fresh rumors worming their way through the populace.

_Did you hear? His own brother. That boy is a monster._

Sometimes, just after waking, there was a small voice wondering if they might not be right.

I ground that voice to dust every time. This wasn't the time for doubt.

But it was still there, and I worried about what it would say when I saw Gaara again. I worried that, faced with that, it wouldn't be quite so small. I worried that, in that moment, I would discover the voice was my own.

Rolling to curl up on my left side, carefully cradling my right arm as I did, I closed my eyes to steal what sleep I could before dawn came and the cool of night gave way to Suna's typical stifling heat.

I would not get much.

[||]8[||]

I inhaled sharply as the green aura of medical chakra washed over my arm, temporarily divested of it's bandages for the healing session and displaying the mixed reds of skin both freshly healed and still scabbing. The medics I'd been seeing daily were skilled, but didn't have the level of control Yashamaru did and I could feel the invasive chakra probing and overpowering my own meager supply.

"That's right," the apprenticed medic said approvingly as he held my arm firm for his master, "hold nice and steady." The genin had the straight, light brown hair that was so common in Suna, shoulder length but held out of eyes by his head band. He put on a friendly face, but I could tell by the way his eyes continually drifted across my room that he was bored.

The doctor studied my arm with detached curiosity as his chakra rolled over it, inspecting the latest medical mystery laid before him. "No signs of demonic chakra," he stated, "I think we finally extracted all the grains yesterday. With that out of the way, we should be able to get everything closed up by the end of the week, and back in working order some time after that. You're lucky he missed the hand, always hard to set right." The close cut dark brown of his hair and the stormy blue of his eyes told me he was probably a Gankyou, backed up by the way he subtly left his left more open than the right, as if he instinctively expected a partner to cover his flank. Unlike his cohort, his eyes glimmered with interest and satisfaction, though I chalked it up to the success in dealing with bijuu chakra rather than any concern for me.

I nodded thankfully, not trusting myself to talk during the procedure, especially as the medic shifted from diagnostic jutsu to more invasive healing. I knew that a wound like mine would take months to heal properly without assistance, even before factoring in Shukaku's influence. Including that, it was doubtful that it would ever quite return to normal without resorting to jutsu.

A half hour later and the medics were rewrapping my arm in fresh bandages, a thin layer of salve sandwiched between to soothe the tender skin and encourage it to heal on it's own.

"You're through the worst of it," the senior medic informed me as the pair of them finished packing up, "but don't put any unnecessary stress on it, or we'll be back where we started."

"Right," I answered as they passed through the door, "no escape tunnels for a couple weeks." The apprentice snorted while the doctor's mouth twisted in distaste at my joke. Sometimes it felt as if Yashamaru and I were the only ones with senses of humor, though admittedly awful ones, in the village.

Once they were gone I retrieved my coded notebook and started flipping through it, as I'd done often in the past few days. While my hand was still functional, the tremors that occasionally wracked my dominant arm ruined any attempt to write. I was limited to going over what I already had and whatever I could dredge up from memory.

Now that I'd actually seen Gaara in action I knew that I wouldn't be able to fix things by just being there. This wasn't anything so simple as him needing a friend. Even if I made him as comfortable with me as he was with Yashamaru the attacks would continue, and tension would mount, until finally my father decided he was more trouble than he was worth. My uncle would die and my brother would snap.

And then the accidents would stop, but the attacks would go on, and I wasn't sure I could pull him back from that.

So I had to make sure he never got there.

In the series it had been as easy as a speech. Admittedly a speech delivered in the middle of a savage brawl between jinchuriki that ultimately left Gaara out of commission, but maybe I could skip that part if I got an early start.

Except... That had only solved his psychosis, hadn't it? A major problem, to be sure, but nothing like the one he was dealing with now.

I knew from his panicked face, from the way he'd run, that he hadn't _meant_ to do anything, that it had been reflexive. But, looking at my notes for the exams, he hadn't slipped once. Oh, he'd lashed out, but every single attack had been deliberate. He'd even held himself back on a number of occasions.

Was that all it was? A matter of control? Something he'd solve as he trained and gained mastery over Shukaku?

It was plausible, but didn't quite ring true. Perhaps it was just me refusing to admit a solution that I couldn't enact, I knew father and Yashamaru were already training him to control the demon as best they could, but I couldn't help but feel that I was missing something. There was a key to this puzzle, I was certain of it. I just had to find it.

[||]8[||]

The Sunday after the incident I awoke with the feeling that something was wrong. I realized after a moment that the light falling across me from my window wasn't quite right. In Suna you could count on a steady amount of sunlight most days out of the year, only ever broken up by the extremely infrequent rain or the occasional sand storm. It was far from the rainy season, and I couldn't detect any driving winds, so I could only assume that someone was blocking the light.

I tried to keep my breathing steady keep still as I'd been taught, though I doubted it would fool anyone with actual training, and tried to sort out who it might be. The ANBU assigned to me were more subtle than that, unless there was some kind of emergency, in which case I'd be carried away before I even woke up. The same went for any potential kidnappers, and assassins would either have slit my throat or already be gone after applying their poisons.

That left people I knew, if I hadn't picked up any stalkers. Temari wouldn't be this patient, and Naoko... Actually, this seemed like _exactly_ the sort of thing Naoko would do. She'd probably have breakfast with her and ask if I'd slept well with her typical detached politeness. I was beginning to think she was playing mind games in retaliation for being stuck with what amounted to baby sitting for years. It was either that or she'd learned how to socialize from a book.

Resolving to inform her of the virtues of knocking, I opened my eyes and was surprised when, instead of my caretaker, I was greeted by the sight of my father. For an instant I thought he even looked concerned, but I blinked and his eyes returned to their typical harsh set. I stared up at him for a long moment as he loomed over my bed, the two of us examining each other. It seemed like that was how all of our meetings began of late.

"Well," he finally said, breaking the tense silence, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I..." I mumbled, breaking eye contact and clenching at my sheets. A stab of pain shot through my injured arm, reminding me that even if the wounds had closed up the skin was still tender. Reminding me how easy it would be to give up, to declare that the problem was bigger than I was, to wash my hands of the terror in my nightmares.

"I made a mistake," I finished quietly.

Father nodded, triumphant validation spreading briefly across his features. "Yes, you did, but now that you see-"

"I should have checked for genjutsu _before_ climbing the wall," I barged on, "I shouldn't have startled him."

The harshness returned to his features in an instant and I felt the barest trickle of killing intent. "Have you learned _nothing?_"

"I learned how to slip rope and wire traps," I answered, shaking my head, "and how to dispel genjutsu. I learned angles of approach and a measure of stealth. But most of all," I took a breath and returned my gaze to lock with his, "I learned that Gaara's afraid and alone and needs my help."

"You will cease this foolishness _immediately_," he growled.

"The way I see it," I said slowly, eyes sliding back to my lap, "you can either grant me access to my brother officially, and our meetings will be safe and supervised, or..." I held up my bandaged arm in demonstration, "you can make sure I'll be on my own next time, too."

"I am Kazekage," he answered coldly, "I could make sure you never leave this compound again."

"That would be..." I paused as I searched for the right word, "wasteful."

He subtly arched an eyebrow at that, expecting me to elaborate. "All three options have a chance of losing a potential ninja," I went on, breaking it down into the bleak arithmetic my father reasoned with. "But yours is the only one that makes it a _certainty_."

Another long silence fell upon us as he weighed my argument.

"You know first hand the danger of your request," he finally said quietly, and I nodded in reply. "If I grant you this, you will _never_ defy me again." His tone brooked no argument, less a demand than a statement of fact.

"On the condition that I have flexibility where Gaara is concerned," I answered anyway. It wasn't like that tone had ever made me back down before. "I didn't do all of this just so you can take everything out of it by adding a hundred stipulations." I didn't like giving my word to obey, but I was hard pressed to think of any other situation where I _could_ disobey him. The past few months had been borderline treason to begin with.

There was a trace of approval in my father's expression at that. Savvy negotiation was just one more in a long line of skills he expected his heirs to excel in.

"Agreed, so long as your exemplary advancement over the past months continues apace." I winced at that. I'd tipped my hand worse during my attempts than I had in all the years before combined, and knew I was labeled a solid prodigy at this point. Keeping it up meant I wouldn't be getting leisure time back any time soon. "I'm sure your uncle will be happy to assist in the same manner you've grown accustomed to," he added when he saw my reticence. There even seemed to be the tiniest sign of amusement in his eyes.

"...Acceptable," I finally said, unable to think of any other addendums.

My father examined me for what seemed an eternity before nodding. "Then you will see him the week after next."

"Why not today?" I asked as he turned to leave, not trusting the delay. I couldn't see what harm it would do, but I couldn't see a real reason for it either.

He paused at the door and shot a meaningful glance at my injured arm. "If you insist on meeting him, I would not have his first sight of you be a reminder of violence and failure." As he left the room I thought I could hear him say something just under his breath, though I couldn't make out what.

I let him go, dumbstruck. Even if his care only extended so far as to sharpen the both of us into deadlier weapons, it was more than I expected from him.

[||]8[||]

I returned to lessons the next day, my arm well enough to do a little writing and hand seal work even if taijutsu practice was still a long ways off. The instructor, as loftily ignorant of my escapades as ever, decided to take advantage of my injury to do more chakra control exercises and work on my off hand throwing.

The week passed quickly, with a marginal improvement in my left hand's aim and my first attempts to float a scrap of paper above a fingertip instead of a palm. Sunday came and went with my confinement continuing on the grounds that going out could needlessly exacerbate my injuries just as they were nearing the end of their healing regimen.

That end came on Tuesday, when the medics removed the bandages one last time and ran a final diagnostic.

"Well," the doctor said as diagnosis shifted to healing, "you're not quite tip-top yet, but after this treatment I'd recommend allowing it to heal naturally. Forcing healing at this stage could cause unnecessary stiffness and, seeing as it's in no danger of opening up unless you're overly rough with it, I think it's better you finish on your own." _And stop wasting my precious time on the Kage's brat,_ I could practically hear him add. He'd never say it out loud, lest he offend my father, but I could tell that once demonic chakra left the equation he'd stopped seeing my case as interesting and started viewing it as busy work.

I nodded in understanding even as I frowned down at my limb. Despite the skin having closed up entirely it was crisscrossed with ridges of angry red flesh, and while the color would in all likelihood fade, it was doubtful the raised scars would follow them. I'd known that there would probably be scarring, but I hadn't thought it would be quite so obvious. Scars and disfigurements were common among shinobi, but four was a little young to acquire such a prominent example.

"Remember, only light taijutsu for the next few weeks," the apprentice said awhile later as the two of them readied to leave, "and keep it out of the sun if you can, it's going to be tender enough without a burn adding to it."

"I promise not to assault any celestial bodies," I shot back. There was a slight hitch in the doctor's step, and I thought I could see the barest signs of a smirk as he turned to close the door. My self satisfied grin at finally getting him faded a moment later as I rubbed self consciously at my right arm, gently running my fingers over the strange new contours that adorned it.

Books and stories glorified scars as signs of honor earned on the battlefield. All I could see in mine was a mark of shame, a reminder of failure and, at the back of my mind, fear. The dreams weren't quite so bad any more, or at least less frequent, but there hadn't been a night that I didn't wake up with a cry on my lips.

There were a scant five days before I would meet my brother, and despite all my studying and all the bravado I'd shown my father I wasn't sure what I'd do when the time came.

[||]8[||]

Two days later I took my seat at the table, my dining privileges having been restored since my accord with father, and was immediately set on edge by Naoka's ever so slightly more cheerful than usual disposition. The woman only seemed to project degrees of peacefulness, and even slight variations from the norm meant something was amiss. I cast a careful glance at the empty seat at the head of the table, wondering if my father would make one of his rare appearances.

I let my guard down when a servant carried our meals in without our patriarch arriving and eagerly dug in. It was nice to have variety back after the lengthy bland diet that had been imposed upon me, and it had been a hard day on top of it. As far as my tutor was concerned, light taijutsu meant binding my arm behind my back and forcing me to fight with my off hand.

Throughout dinner Temari kept shooting looks at me, but I ignored them. She'd been doing much the same since the accident and had only gotten more obvious since the bandages were removed. I supposed I couldn't blame her for being curious, I wasn't sure if anyone had actually told her what had happened, and I made quite the spectacle.

As we finished our meals and the servant returned to take the dishes away I shifted to leave the table, only to suddenly find Naoka behind me. I watched with trepidation as she placed a package wrapped in plain white paper before me and bowed deep.

"Happy birthday, Kankuro!"

I blinked in mild surprise at the announcement. The last few weeks had passed in a daze, and the months before in a rush of fervent activity that had left little time for concern over the date.

Of course, even without everything else taking up my attention it would likely have slipped my mind until the last minute. Birthdays had always had a way of sneaking up on me, whatever universe I inhabited, and that had been when they were actually celebrated. The only real party I'd had as Kankuro had been for the first anniversary of my arrival, when Karura had still been alive. Significant dates were still noted, gifts were exchanged, but there wasn't really a celebratory aspect to any of it, and so I didn't really find myself looking forward to it.

I turned my attention to the present before me and set about carefully peeling away tape and unfolding paper, noting the small signature in one corner marking that it was from Naoka. Inside I found a box containing a set of blunted steel kunai, much like Temari had gotten for her last birthday. A definite step up from the wooden set I'd trained with up until then, but still not too dangerous for a child by shinobi standards.

"Thank you," I said with a respectful bow of my head, "I will use them well."

I arched an eyebrow at the next gift placed before me, this one marked by my father's seal. Every birthday that I could remember since the first, the only acknowledgment he'd offered had been a small but noticeable increase in pocket money doled out that week. I lifted the lid away and examined the items inside.

First was a set of arm bindings, which were vaguely thoughtful all things considered, but perhaps a touch mocking so soon after losing my bandages. Running them through my fingers I immediately found that they were finer than the mere bandages they at first appeared, composed of two layers, the outer rougher and sturdier than I'd worn over the past few weeks and the inner composed of some softer and smoother material, but no more fragile. Some variety of silk, perhaps spider? Expensive and doubtless imported, if that were the case.

I pondered what their meaning was as I checked the box for anything else. My father just didn't _do_ gifts unless they carried some kind of message.

I found my answer buried beneath the wrappings. A pair of fingerless gloves of the same shade of sandstone brown that dominated Suna, an insignia written on the back of each. On the left, the familiar hour glass sign of Suna, engraved into the plate worn by every ninja of the village. On the right, the far less common but still easily recognizable Sabidou family crest, formed by a half circle, the dividing line jagged and topped by a gently waving line representing wind.

My father might lack any sense of humor these days, but the wordplay was fairly obvious. Thanks to our agreement, I was now bound firmly to the clan and the village, and these were a reminder of that. It was odd that the family's crest was on the right glove rather than Suna's, as the right usually represented the dominant principle, but perhaps he wanted to remind me that putting family over the village was what had damaged that arm to begin with.

"I'm sure these will come in... Handy?" Alright, even I thought that one was terrible.

As if to confirm the thought, Temari groaned from my other side, where she'd been dithering with the small gift she'd concealed throughout the meal.

"Just, get better, okay?" She said as she shoved the package at me, stepping back the moment I'd gingerly taken it out of her hands. I flicked my gaze between it and my sister a few times, neither of us quite knowing what to do with actual displays of concern. We cared, with father so distant we had to on some level to keep from falling apart, but we were siblings, which meant fighting and pestering and sarcastic banter, and we _liked_ it that way.

Shrugging, my eyes settled on the present. I'd gotten enough packages like it in my last life to instantly recognize the look and feel of a book wrapped in cut up shopping bags. From the way the upper and lower edges were more crumpled than folded and the gratuitous amounts of tape used, I guessed she had wrapped it herself, which probably meant she'd picked it out herself too. A stark contrast to previous years, when we'd each depended on our caretaker to come up with gift ideas, Temari because little girls didn't get little boys even when they weren't secretly reincarnated from a different culture, and myself because I'd always been terrible at picking presents.

Deciding that getting all the crisscrossing adhesive covering it off was a lost cause, I went straight for tearing the wrapping away. My eyes took in the cover and immediately glued themselves to the author's name before springing up to the title. I found myself arching an eyebrow and looking up at my sister.

"Sorry if it's not a good one," she stammered, "but it was on sale and you're so _weird_ and hard to shop for and-"

She cut herself off as I slipped off my chair and wrapped my arms around her in a rare hug. "No, it's perfect," I said before stepping back and grinning snidely at her. "I'm just surprised that you have actual _taste_."

This got me a solid punch to the arm, thankfully the left, and a rant from Temari about how _I_ was weird and tasteless and didn't deserve a big sister as considerate as she was.

Ah, it was good to have everything back to normal on that front.

It really was a perfect gift, though. I'd never believed in fate, but disbelieving reincarnation clearly hadn't worked so I figured I might as well take it as a sign.

[||]8[||]

I stood with a measure of trepidation before the gate to the house Yashamaru and Gaara used. Despite making a few attempts in the months leading up up to this, I'd never actually gotten into the yard by the front way. The vertical slats of wood offered no more purchase than the walls on either side, and there was no lock to pick so I'd never bothered learning. Instead it was held shut by a latch on the other side, which would be inconvenient for a civilian, but only as much trouble as a roof hop for a ninja.

Today, it had supposedly been left unlatched.

Swallowing my doubts, I pushed the gate open, unsurprised by the harsh screech of poorly oiled hinges. Ninja generally followed two schools of thought on entrances: You either made them silent to ease your comings and goings, or made them loud and annoying so no one else could do the same. My uncle apparently followed the second. Or was a lazy groundskeeper who _claimed_ to follow it. Hard to say for sure.

As I mused on Yashamaru's maintenance habits, I stepped into the yard and _really_ shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when my foot came down on a tripwire that had been hidden in the door's shadow. There was the familiar hiss of rapidly spooling wire and the very nearly nostalgic sensation of loops tightening around my ankles, and before I had time to do more than shout "oh come on!" I found myself strung up upside down between the gateposts, a barely visible line of wire attached to each.

I heard chuckling behind the gate and wasn't particularly surprised when my uncle strolled around it to view my predicament. "Sloppy, Kankuro. I _know_ your old man told you I'd be... _tutoring_ you."

"I'd _really_ hoped for lectures," I sighed as I concentrated on directing chakra to my legs to perform the wire slipping technique I'd been practicing.

_Let's see, spread a thin layer over, let it smooth over my skin and clothes, striations perpendicular to the wire to stop it slipping tighter instead of off, keep legs flexed for the same reason..._ It was a lot to keep going at once, but I'd been getting a lot of practice in over the past few months. Occasionally I held back a flinch as I felt some of the wire slip tighter, but for the most part it was slipping up, or, rather, I was slipping down.

By the time most of it had bunched around my ankles I was low enough to place my hands on the ground beneath, thankful that the trap hadn't actually pulled me too far up. Straining to keep the slack I'd acquired open, I pointed my toes up and took a breath. Finally, I snapped my ankles together and yanked my legs down and out, narrowly outpacing the coils of wire as they snapped closed behind.

Before feeling any relief at my escape I realized that I'd suddenly put all my weight on my arms and crumpled as the right gave out with a sharp protest of pain at the pressure.

"No lecture today," Yashamaru said as he knelt next to me and I rolled to a seated position, cradling my arm. "You seem to have grasped the principle well enough." I felt the soothing sensation of healing chakra descend around the aching limb, sinking past the wrappings I'd gotten earlier in the week. He took a long moment to examine my arm before lifting his eyes to meet mine.

"You know you don't have to do this, right?"

"Yeah," I answered, putting on my my best mischievous grin despite my anxiety, "gonna do it anyways." There was no doubt in my mind that trying to set Gaara straight was dangerous, but a safe life had been out of the question the moment I'd been born into a ninja clan.

He studied me for a moment before returning my grin, declaring "good answer!" He'd probably seen through my facade, but apparently approved anyways.

With that, we both stood and headed for the house, passing into the small alcove that separated the front door from the rest of the house in the same way an airlock might in a futile attempt to keep sand out of the building. Beyond it I found myself in a surprisingly normal living room, set up with a couch, a few chairs and a coffee table, and toys scattered across the floor. A few of them were surrounded by small pools of sand. I caught a small frown form on my uncle's face from the corner of my eye.

"Gaara?" He called out, "where are you? We have a visitor." We both heard scampering from down the hall across the room and Yashamaru flicked his eyes to mine. "He's a little shy."

I nodded nervously as we crossed the room and passed a couple doors before coming to one that was slightly ajar. Pulling it open, we stepped inside into a small bedroom much like my own when I'd been younger, save the piles of sand scattered on the floor. Shukaku apparently liked having an arsenal at the ready. On the bed I spied a lump bundled up in blankets which, from the occasional movement, I surmised held our quarry.

"Go 'way," a voice said from the lump with a combination of petulance and guilt that only a three year old can muster, "I'll hurt you." There was no threat in the voice, just more guilt layered on.

Suddenly my nightmares and anxieties seemed just a little bit silly. This wasn't a soul devouring demon or an unstoppable monster. This was a kid who was just as scared of what he could do as the rest of the village. It didn't chase away my fears entirely, and I was sure I could look forward to nightmares for awhile yet, but they didn't seem quite so close anymore. I knew I'd be able to do this.

"Nope," I said with confidence that, for once, wasn't false, "I don't think so."

"Why not?" He asked, and for a moment I caught sight of an eye peeking through a gap in the blankets before they were yanked shut again as I started walking towards the bed.

"Because," I said, climbing up beside him, "you're my doofy little brother."

"Doofy?" He questioned as I scooted back across the bed until my back was against the wall.

"Means dumb," I answered smoothly in my best obnoxious brother voice, "but in an endearing way."

"I'm _not dumb_," he declared, blankets falling from his head as he glared at me. I noted the sand on the floor twitched, but there was none of the direction or malevolence that had been there before. Interesting.

"...End'ring?" He asked a moment later, face scrunched up in adorable confusion.

"Means I like ya," I replied, fishing in my pouch until I found the book Temari had gotten me. "Now, I've got a new book I'm gonna read whether you're here or not. Maybe stick around?" He didn't leave or pull the sheets back over his head, so I took it as my cue to begin. "This is _The Tale of a Gutsy Ninja_."

Temari hadn't thought to take the sticker off her purchase, and the price placed it squarely in the bargain bin. Reading through it, with Gaara inching closer to me all the time until he was snuggled at my side and on the edge of dozing as he had before we'd been separated, I could see why. It was over the top and idealistic and simple and straight forward in a way that the adults it was marketed to didn't expect from their literature. But for kids? I'd always been the guy who loved cartoons well into adulthood, finding Superman's boyscout morality satisfying even if it were a simple thing in a complex world.

In that context, Jiraiya was far from the worst children's author I'd ever come across. I didn't even have to do any censoring, which I'd been a little worried about.

Yashamaru stayed, leaning casually in the doorway, and I didn't mind because Gaara probably barely remembered me and a friendly face could only help. It also comforted me to know that the ex-ANBU could probably yank me out of danger if things went pear shaped, but I wasn't over worried about that after awhile.

And, as I read, I had something of an epiphany. It was suddenly so very obvious what Gaara's control issues came down to. The way he lashed out now, the way he would have at the exams in the other time line, how Naruto's own bijuu was contained.

It all came down to what unleashed the beast. For the nine-tails, it was rage. For Shukaku, I'd put my money on fear.

Take a child from everything he'd known, give him a single ally and a village full of wary looks and angry glares, and you don't breed hatred. Not when no one in their right mind would touch him, not in a town more likely to run and placate than heap on abuse. You get an anxiety disorder and terror at the big scary world.

Becoming invulnerable, a monster that knew no fear behind it's walls of sand and insanity, he would have suddenly found himself in absolute control of his power. That he did the demon's will anyways was of no consequence, the power was _his_.

Faced with opposition at the exams, the demon didn't take control when it's blood lust was stymied. It didn't come forward to swat the gnats that buzzed and bothered it's host. It took over when it's vessel bled and knew fear again for the first time in years.

The more I thought about it, the safer a conclusion it seemed until, as I left a napping Gaara in my uncle's care, I was certain that was it. I wouldn't have to teach my brother iron control, or talk down a psychopath, I'd just have to get him comfortable around people. Make him realize they wouldn't, _couldn't_ hurt him, that his fear was, if anything, a little bit silly. I doubted it would be easy, I really had no idea what I was doing, but compared to the other options it seemed very... Doable.

And even if I were wrong, getting him socialized probably wouldn't hurt.

Besides, I'd be back in a week no matter what. We'd only gotten through a couple chapters, and I wanted to see how the main character would best his sensei's test.

[||]8[||]

It had taken awhile to get Gaara completely comfortable with me, working up from reading to playing with his toys to running about playing hide and seek and even an actual game of ninja, which I suddenly realized I'd been missing terribly. Now he was actually looking forwards to my visits, and Yashamaru confided in me that he hadn't injured anyone in weeks. There'd been a few incidents, but they'd been sluggish enough that no one had actually gotten caught up in them.

The pattern I'd noticed on my first visit held out, with any of the myriad tantrums that three year olds were wont to throw agitating sand without giving it any actual direction. There were only ever attacks when he was startled or having a particularly bad day, but even those were getting less common. Having someone there because they wanted to be seemed to help to no end.

Yashamaru would have done it anyways, but he was honest to a fault and had probably told the kid that it was a mission. Father apparently stopped in weekly to train him, but his patented 'throw killing intent at it until it listens' approach left much to be desired. And the villagers lived up to the very low expectations set for them.

Still, there was progress. Enough that I'd managed to convince my uncle that a trip to the park was a good idea.

Gaara had opted to walk rather than be carried by Yashamaru, who trailed a few paces behind, his small hand wrapped tightly around my own as we entered the play area. The whole way there he huddled close to me, eyes darting about at the unfamiliar route and occasional passerby. For the most part people didn't spot him, having grown used to watching for him on Yashamaru's shoulders rather than at the ground level he actually stood at, but those few that did suddenly discovered reasons to be on a different street.

Finally, we passed out of the winding streets and into the open space of the park, the ground shifting from hard packed earth meant to ease travel to the softer sands designed to cushion falls. I looked around, pleased to note that no one seemed to have noticed us yet. Starting the day by emptying the park with our mere presence would be impressive, but not particularly auspicious.

At last I spied my targets, a pair of figures about my own size, almost indistinguishable from behind, stooping low as they collected various paper weapons they'd just finished tossing about. It would be good to see the twins again.

"Hey guys," I called out as we approached the two of them. They each froze, took a moment to exchange a look I couldn't quite decipher, and slowly turned to face us. Hisoka carried a bored expression that I recognized as the one she wore when she wanted an explanation, and her brother was wide eyed and vaguely panicked looking.

After a moment far more tense than what I'd expected, Hikaru spun on his heel and sped away, squeaking something that sounded like "he's gonna get me!" I could sense Gaara drawing into himself at my side and knew that if I looked down I'd see him screwing his eyes shut and trying to blot out the world.

"Hikaru, get back here!" I shouted after him, my hand tightening around Gaara's and my face settling into a snarl, "this is my brother and _you will be nice!_"

Hisoka raised an arm to block my path as I prepared to follow her brother. "It's not him," she said, nodding at my brother with a distantly exasperated expression, "it's you." I arched an eyebrow as her gaze settled on me.

"Me? Why would he be afraid of _me?_"

"I _may_ have told him you died after he bailed on the operation," she answered with her best approximation of an innocent expression. Which was to say she looked like a super villain smugly demanding ransom. I could hear Yashamaru sniggering behind us.

"And he bought that?" I asked incredulously. Hikaru wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he could usually pick up on lies that obvious.

Hisoka leveled me with a withering 'you're being an idiot' glare as she smoothly answered, "you've been gone for over five months."

I opened and closed my mouth a few times as I tried and failed to come up with some kind of counter or excuse. "Well. That would do it," I finally answered as I realized she was at least right about that. Time flies when you're launching a rescue operation, apparently. My uncle was dissolving into laughter at this point.

The twin watched me expectantly for a moment and I felt my mouth curl into a grin. "You wanna convince him that I'm a spirit come to take terrible vengeance for being abandoned?"

I found my maniacal expression mirrored as the two of us looked down at Gaara. "Tiny Sabidou," she said pleasantly, "would you like to assist?"

My brother glanced confusedly between us for a moment before answering. "Um... Okay?"

"Excellent!" I declared, tugging him into a trot as the three of us headed for the boulder I'd seen Hikaru hide behind.

There would be no games of ninja that day, or for many weeks to come. It would be a long time before Gaara got comfortable enough with others for that, and for the most part he'd be restricted to the swings or target contests or the myriad games we would come up with to work around his limitations. I didn't mind. I had my brother, and my friends, and, for the first time in a long time, all seemed right with the world.

I wasn't fool enough to think it would last, but for the moment, I was content.

* * *

A/N: I considered dragging this out for another chapter to dive into building up Gaara before he was ready to go out and about, but after the reconciliation it seemed fairly obvious where things were heading. I also don't know enough psychology to bullshit my way through that much therapy. So, onwards to the academy!

Probably not gonna be able to update for awhile. Things to do, people to see, reality to conquer, all that good stuff. Rest assured, I will return, and in greater numbers.

I continue to be blown away by the attention this has gotten. Over two hundred follows and favorites, nearly a hundred reviews, and twenty communities. You folks sure know how to make an author feel vindicated.

In the interest of improving my writing, is there anything you particularly like about the story? Anything you want to see less of? Favorite line, most aggravating flaws? Come on folks, hit me. I can take it.


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